A Comparative Study Based On The Spatial Displacement Category In Chinese And Vietnamese

In People’s understanding of space factors keep a very important role on the way of their expression of spatial displacement category. How People know about the space around them, they will have a corresponding spatial displacement category expression. With the different specific environmental conditions, the subject of language expression will have the different understanding of space. Chinese and Vietnamese belong to south Asian languages, but belong to different language families, Chinese is Han and Tibetan language and Vietnamese is Meng-Khmer language, Chinese and Vietnamese have many similarities and differences in understanding of space, including the spatial displacement.Adopting to the previous studies mostly from the displacement of the surface structure of Chinese, such as displacement verbs, directional verbs, directional complements, Verb-direction construction etc, unsystematically discusses about [displacement] semantic features, but just a bit fragmented, and haven’t reach to the form a system of line and surface, so the research method starting from the form haven’t found out the nature problem, we think that if we want to find out the nature problem of displacement, we have to analyse and construct the system of displacement category’s semantic concept features from the overall perspective which finally verified through language facts.Starting from the meaning like this, based on the theory of Talmy lexicalization patterns and semantic concept as the breakthrough point, these research method throughout the whole paper. Paper contains five chapters, main content as follows: Firstly, from the overall perspective of the cognitive research of Talmy, construct the system of displacement category’s semantic concept, including four main concept semantic component:"Figure"(Displacement Subject),"Ground"(Reference position),"Motion"(Displacement force),"Path"(including the direction), then further analyse the underlying concept semantic component of the displacement category and point out the same and difference in the cognitive characteristics of displacement category in Chinese and Vietnamese.Secondly, Talmy put the motion verbs divided into three pattern types:(1)[motion+manner/cause] pattern;(2)[motion+path] pattern;(3)[motion+figure]pattern, this paper clearly points out that Chinese motion verbs and Vietnamese motion verbs normally have two pattern types, respectively [motion+manner/cause] pattern (reflected by manner verb) and [motion+path] pattern (reflected by path verb). This paper based on analyzing the distribution of the lexicalization of the semantic component of displacement category, points ouf the same and difference of in the cognitive characteristics of displacement category in Chinese and Vietnamese in more detail.Through the analysis of the expressive structure of [bounded] displacement event and [unbounded] displacement event in Chinese and Vietnamese, we can approxinmately find out their main same and difference. Differece is mainly about the lexicalization distribution differences and the differences of word order. The paper respectively talk about simple and complex grammatical structures.The same of the simple grammatical structures’lexicalization distribution in Chinese and Vietnamese are normal path verbs (for both self-agentivity motion and agentivity motion) and special path verbs (only for self-agentivity motion and not for agentivity motion). The most difference is Vietnamese directive auxiliary verbs haven’t divided in simple structures and complex structures, haven’t divided in deictic semantic composition and undeictic semantic composition.The most popular complex grammatical structures in Chinese is Verb-direction construction, including simple Verb-direction construction and complex Verb-direction construction, totally4pattern forms. But in Vietnamese, there only have simple Verb-direction construction, this is the biggest difference, totally2pattern forms with2attached patterns. The paper mainly talk about the position of the Verb-direction construction and the object, the restricting factors as the condition of displacement event, the condition of object, the condition of verb,etc.In Vietnamese, the form F越1and F越2don’t express the [deictic] semantic component,can be changed by the form F’越1and F’越2which added [deictic] place object (phial dang/ben/cho+place noun+nay/day/do/kia").Different grammatical structure sometimes can transform to each other in both Chinese and Vietnamese, so the paper points out the basic restricting factors of the transformation.