A Study on Ethno-specified Meaning of Animal Words in Japanese

Animal words in Japanese have rich ethno-specified meanings and are a most special part of Japanese cultural words.These words are an important avenue to understand Japan's history and culture,folk customs and spiritual world.The production of the ethno-specified meanings of Japanese animal words has certain motivations,mainly including function motivation,similarity motivation and symbolic motivation.The principal mirror images of ethno-specified meanings embodied by Japanese animal words are geographical environment(island country-maritime nation),animism,totem worship and ethnical cognitive psychology.