| Spatial concepts are universal to human beings,and both English and Chinese have spatial dimensional adjective systems.Researchers in China and from other countries have conducted a large amount of research concerning the morphology,syntactic functions,semantics,acquisition and contrastive studiesbetween some pairs of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives.However,previous studies ignored metonymies in the use of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives,and there has been no comprehensive contrastive study of the spatial,metonymic and metaphorical meanings of the spatial dimensional adjectives in the two languages,which fails to give us a full picture of the meanings of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives.Furthermore,previous studies focused on the synchronic studies of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives and failed to see the diachronic development of their senses.Meaning is based on embodied experience,and human beings form image schemas out of their interaction with the physical world.Through the transformations and mappings of image schemas into abstract domains arise metonymies and metaphors,which lead to meaning extension.Speakers of different languages have the same concepts on the atomic level,but theyoftenhave different semantic concepts and abstract concepts on the molar level,which is maintained by Neo-Whorfianism.From the afore mentioned cognitive semantic perspective,the present study conducts a contrastive study of the spatial meaning,the metonymic states of spatial dimensional adjectives and the domains of their metaphorical mappings from diachronic and synchronic perspectives.This study aims to answer the following questions:(1)Whatare the similarities and differences between the spatial meanings of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectivesand what are the causes?(2)What are the types of metonymies in the use of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives? What are the similarities and differences between metonymies in English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives and what are the causes?(3)What are the similarities and differences between the target domains in the metaphorical mappings of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives and what are the causes?From the cognitive semantic theoretical persectivestated above,this dissertation first puts spatial dimensional adjectives into different categories according to the dimension(s)profiled,and adopting definitions from dictionaries and data from large corpuses,does a qualitative analysis of the similarities and differences between the spatial meanings,the metonymies and the metaphors in the uses of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives in both their static and dynamic states.The definitions of spatial dimensional adjectives are taken from synchronic dictionaries,with those for English spatial dimensional adjectives taken from Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary(8th Edition)and those for Chinese ones taken from Modern Chinese Dictionary(6th Edition).The analysis of shifts of form classes and shifts of meaning arising from metonymies is based on the data from diachronic dictionaries,those from English taken fromOxford English Dictionary(online edition),and those from Chinese taken fromA Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary(trade edition).Such data as frequencies of use and synchronic examples in the present study are mainly extracted from British National Corpus(BNC)at BYU and CNCorpus with English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives as search entries.Analysis is then made as to whether the spatial dimensional adjective expresses spatial meanings or metaphorical meanings in contexts.If it expresses spatial meanings,analysis is made as to what types of spatial meaning it expresses: extensional,distance,or positional.Then the types of metonymies are identifiedaccording to their collocationsand the cognitive mechanismsare probed.If it expresses metaphorical senses,analysis is made as to what cognitive domains it is mapped into.Based on the above analysis,the similarities and differences between the spatial,metonymic and metaphorical meanings of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives are summarized and tentative explanations are made.The present study has the following findings:(1)There are counterparts for each pair/set of English spatial dimensional adjectives in Chinese,and the same semantic elements are represented by the members of the two spatial dimensional adjective systems and both languages express the same types of spatial meanings.Dimension and length are the basic concepts in English and Chinese sptial dimensionaladjectives,which reflect the combination of wholistic thinking and profiling in spatial cognition.There areovergeneralizations in the directons profiled by English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives of height and depth,overgeneralizations of the numbers of dimensions profiled by English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives depicting overall dimensions and width,and there is a shift of meaning between the extensional meaning,the distance meaning and the positional meaning for English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives.There are some differences between the structures of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjective systems,with 3 more membersfound in English.There is greater specificity in the conceptualization and representation of distance,height,width and overall dimensions in English,and there is a higher degree of specificity in the conceptualization and representation of shortness and low levelin Chinese.This means that there are universal concepts on the atomic level of spatial dimensional cognition,and the differences in the specificity of sptial dimensional concepts are reflections of the differences between semantic concepts on the molar level.(2)Metonymy plays an important role in the meaning extension of spatial dimensional adjectives.There are two types of metonymies in the use of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives: shifts of form classes and shifts of meanings.The cognitive motivation of the class shifts the standing-for relation between the different elements(parts)in the same cognitive domain,and the cognitive motivation of the meaning shifts is the standing-for relation between the parts and the whole in the same cognitive domain.English and Chinese metonymies not only have the same types of metonymies but also the following similarities.Some English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives used to be members of other form classes,and most English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives shift to nouns,adverbs and verbs,and several are used as prepositions or pronouns,but the prototypical function of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives is still to describe relations and qualities.When English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives are used as other parts of speech,they are mostly informal,nonce uses or have already passed out of use.The meaning shifts caused by metonymies fall into two categories: the overgeneralization of the numbers of dimensions profiled by spatial dimensional adjectives,and the shifts between the extensional meaning and the positional meaning.There are a great number of similarities between English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives in their meaning shifts,which is because English and Chinese speakers have the same image schemas in relation to spatial concepts and the rotations and transformations of these space-related image schemas lead to the extension of the spatial meanings of the dimensional adjectives in English and Chinese.However,there are also some differences between the class shifts of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives.Firstly,“distant” has not undergone any meaning shift,which might be attributed to the fact that other adjectives depicting distance in English have be freely used as verbs and adverbs.This means that the form class shift may be constrained by synonyms.Secondly,there is a higher degree of metonymization in English spatial dimensional adjectives.The proportion of English spatial dimensional adjectives and that of Chinese ones used to describe the manners,duarations and degrees of actions are very similar,but the frequency for Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives to shift to adverbs is much lower.This results from the categorization ofform classes in Chinese,which suggests that the study of lexical itemshave to takethe categorization of form classes and the grammatical constructsinto consideration.(3)English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives are mapped into the Quantity Domain,the Extent and Scale Domain,the Degree Domain,the Evaluation Domain,the Comparision Domain,the Force and Magnitude domain,the Age Domain,the Time Domain,the Perception Domain,the Mental Domain,the Relation Domain,the Policy Domain,and the Economy Domain.Metaphorization of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives is more common than metonymization,and the metaphorical meanings are not all included in the synchronic dictionaries.There are a largest number of mapping domains for English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives profiling overall dimesions,and there is correspondence between the metaphorical domains of spatial dimensional adjectives depicting salient dimensions in the two languages.English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives representing the same type of spatial meaning have similar preferences in their metaphorical mappings,with distance for the conceptualization of length of time,height for levels and degrees,sizes for extents,and dimensions for importance.The meanings of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives move closer to the subjective end of the continuum through metaphorical mappings.There are also differences in the metaphorical mappings between English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives.The two pairs of spatial dimensional adjectives profiling overall dimensionsin English have different preferences in their metaphorical mappings,and there are differences when English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives of depicting height are mapped into the Time Domain and the Age Domain,and “???” point to different affective poles from other spatial dimensional adjectives in their metaphorical mappings.The following conclusions can be drawn from this study.First,this study supports Neo-Whorfianism,which holds that the semantic components on thebaic level are the same across languages.Because of common phylogenetic inheritance and common terrestrial fate,English and Chinese speakers form the same concepts on the atomic level based on common image schemas and common bodily experience.The pervasiveness of the metaphorization of English and Chinese spatial dimensional adjectives is reflection of the pervasiveness of metaphorical thinking in human cognition,which shows that spatial cognition is basic to abstract thinking.The universality of cross-linguistic basic concepts makes it possible for speakers of different langauges to communicate with each other.However,thinking and speaking are based on concepts of the molar level,and thus there are a large number of differences between English and Chinese speakers in the details of their conceptualization of spatial dimensional concepts,shifts of form classes,and the construing of abstract concepts on the molar level.There is universality and variability between conceptualizations in different cultures and linguistic communities,and there is universality and ethinicity in natural language semantic systems.The different preferences in the metaphorical mappings between different pairs of spatial dimensional adjectives and their counterparts in the other language seem to support Lakoff's claim that if there are differences in the basic concepts,there will be more variations in the extended meanings(Lakoff,1987).Although the essential elements and the basic strutures of the image schemas are kept,other elements in metaphorical mappings are often influenced by the ethnographic and cultural psychology of the speakers,and the different affective polarities of “???” in metaphorical mappings seem to point to the combination of a diachronic perspective and a synchronic one in the study of the cognitive motivations of linguistic forms and their meanings.Second,the research results support Halliday's opinion that language is complementarities of system and instances.The analysis of the spatial dimensional adjectives in contexts has found out a lot of meanings and usages that have not be put into the dictionaries.This is because dictionaries represent the system end of the lexical semantic system and corpuses are the sum total of texts.What is retrieved from the corpues are instances of the lexicon,and they are realizations of the linguistic potential.If the usages and meanings do not gain public recognition or are not used over a long period of time,they will be passed out of use.If these usages stay in the language for long and are used frequently,the meanings will be entrenched and may be included in dictionaries over time.Therefore,instances are on one hand realizations of the lexical semantic system of languages and are novel usages of the lexical semantic system,and on the other hand these new senses will in turn enrich the lexical semantic system after they have got permanent status in the language. |
PDF Full Text Request