A Study of Adding Psychological Feeling into the Model of Synaesthesia at the Morpheme Level in Modern Chinese

The synaesthetic mapping pattern of modern Chinese lexicon have long been a focal point in both national and international linguistic studies. However, issues at the morpheme level are scarce, and there is rarely incorporating psychological sensations into mapping models. This paper meticulously analyzes 279 synaesthetic cases, derived from 190 adjectival sensory words in the Modern Chinese Dictionary (7th Edition). Through this analysis, 27 synaesthesia patterns are identified. It is discovered that the phenomenon of synaesthesia in modern Chinese significantly differs at the morpheme level and lexicon level. Notably, psychological feeling in Chinese synaesthesia is frequently mapped as destination, becoming a distinctive feature of these metaphors. This finding provides new perspectives and methods for research in lexicology, etymology, and machine translation. Studying sensory metaphors within words in the Chinese lexicon and comparing them with those within phrases revealed the characteristics of sensory word formation in modern Chinese, offering fresh insights and examples for research in etymology and semantic evolution.