| Sensory experiences are the experiences people perceive through their interactions with the outside world with the help of sense organs.Through their perception of sensory experiences,people could shape their knowledge about the physical,psychological and abstract worlds.As the basic bodily experiences,sensory experiences have been influenced by factors such as the environment,social culture and historical development.On the other hand,comprehending the literature on contrastive studies has presented a challenge in recent attempts to examine the underlying cognitive factors beneath language structures.Some researchers have successfully made constrasts between English and Chinese semantic categories from a cognitive perspective.Their outcomes offered new perspectives and paths for contrastive studies of English and Chinese semantic categories.Sensory adjectives are the words which denote the properties,states and changes that are perceived by language users.The present study aims to examine and contrast the prototypical members and prototypical features(on the sementic plane)of English and Chinese sensory adjectives at the synchronic level.Then the diachronic changes of the prototypes and categorizations of English and Chinese sensory adjectives are contrasted to reveal the underlying regularities and motivations.The study contrasts the organization and birth of English and Chinese sensory categories,to examine the connections between sensory experiences,conceptual representations and language representations.In this way,we can better our understanding of the relations between prototype,cognition and culture.All oriented towards experientialist view,Prototype theory,Cognitve grammar(Langacker,1987)and Ideation base(Halliday & Matthiessen,1999)share similar research objects and objectives in the studies of category and categorization.The theories all aim to examine how people construe experiences through language.Prototype theory focuses on prototype and categorization.Cognitve grammar and Ideation base both deal with experience construal and categorization.The theories intersect with each other and agree with the themes of the present study.Besides,they complement each other in terms of theoretical origins and methodologies.We establish the theoretical base by taking Prototype theory as the main body and integrating the concepts and theories of Cognitve grammar and Ideation base with the main body.Based on prototype theory,we contrast the prototypes and categorizatons of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.We make use of Cognitve grammar and Ideation Base to explain the commonalities and differences in the prototypes and categorizatons of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.The present study collects data from the corpora and questionnaires,combines the synchronic and diachronic approaches,and makes contrastive analysis.The synchronic corpra include British National Corpus(BNC)and Corpus of Chinese Language(CCL),while the diachronic data come from Oxford English Dictionary(OED,Second Edition),Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters(Second Edition),Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Words,the Helsinki Corpus of Historical English(HC)and Peking University Ancient Chinese Corpus.The study examines the prototypes and categorizations of English sensory adjectives in four historical periods,namely Old English,Middle English,Early Modern English and Modern English.The study investigates the prototypes and categorizations of Chinese sensory adjectives in four historical periods,namely Old Chinese,Middle Chinese,Early Modern Chinese and Modern Chinese.Free Listing Questionnaire and Prototypicality Rating Questionnaire are adopted to study English and Chinese speakers' cognitions of the prototypical members of sensory adjectives.The present study has the following findings.(1)The synchronic studies of prototypical memebers show that English and Chinese sensory adjectives have the same prototypical members,that is tactile and dimensional adjectives.Because English and Chinese speakers share the same physiological and sensory mechanisms,with similar input of sensory experiences.English and Chinese tactile adjectives,dimensional adjectives and olfactory adjectives have different prototypical members.Chinese gustatory adjectives are much more typical than English gustatory adjectives.In the sub-categories,English and Chinese temperature adjectives,wide/narrow adjectives,bright adjectives,spicy adjectives and fragrant adjectives differ greatly in typicality.Because in English and Chinese Cultural Models,the sensory experiences of these categories differ distinctively in prominence.Sensory experiences are not only physiological results,but also social and cultural products.The prototypical memebers of English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories differ,because English and Chinese have divergent cultural traditions and social and historical evolutions.(2)The synchronic studies of prototypical features show that the prototypical features of English and Chinese sensory adjectives are sensory meaning on the sementic plane.English and Chinese sensory adjectives both prototypically realize the semantic functions of <epithet> and <attribute>.English and Chinese sensory adjectives both have prototypical correlations between <epithet> and sensory meanings,and between <attribute> and emotional/coginitive meanings.Moreover,English and Chinese temperature adjectives have prototypical correlations between <epithet> and tactile/ambient temperatures,between <attribute> and personal-feeling temperature.That's because English and Chinese speakers share similar sensory experiences and have some commonalities in their cognitive scannings and subjectivity/objectivity construals of sensory experiences.However,English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories have some differences in their prototypical features as well.First,English and Chinese sub-categories differ in their prototypical features,especially gustatory adjectives,visual adjectives and tactile adjectives.In the English and Chinese Cultural Models,the associations between English and Chinese gustatory,visual and tactile experiences and cognitive domains differ greatly in their connectiveness and importance.Second,English and Chinese sensory adjectives vary in their correlations between semantic features and semantic functions.The sensory meanings and <epithet> of English sensory adjectives are more closely correlated than Chinese sensory adjectives.The emotional/coginitive meanings and <attribute> of English sensory adjectives are more closely correlated than Chinese sensory adjectives.English and Chinese sensory adjectives vary in their correlations between semantic features and semantic functions because they differ in the cognitive scannings and diachronic development of semantic funtions.Therefore,the differences in the prototypical features of English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories are not caused by the oppositions of “objective” experiences,but by the divergences in English and Chinese Cultural Models and cognitive scannings of sensory experiences.(3)The diachronic studies of prototypical members show that tactile and dimensional adjectives remain the protypical members of English and Chinese sensory adjectives throughout the four historical periods.Among the sub-categories,English and Chinese dimensional adjectives,visual adjectives and auditory adjectives share the same protypical members throughout the periods.On the other hand,the protypical members of English and Chinese sensory adjectives undergo the most dramatic changes in the periods of Modern English and Modern Chinese.The protypical members of Chinese sensory adjectives change more dramatically.As for the sub-categories,the protypical members of English and Chinese gustatory and olfactory adjectives differ considerably in their diachronic developments.In the English and Chinese Cultural Models,sensory experiences are not permanent or a priori.They constantly change with the ongoing social and histocial processes.The change of protypical members can reflect to some extent the changes of sensory experiences in the society and culture.The diachronic studies of prototypical features show that sensory meaning remain the protypical feature for English and Chinese sensory adjectives throughout the four historical periods.Among the sub-categories,sensory meaning remain the protypical feature for English and Chinese tactile,dimensional,gustatory and auditory adjectives.Due to the social,historical and cultural factors,English and Chinese visual adjectives differ greatly in the diachronic changes of their prototypical semantic features.English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories differ in the diachronic changes of the prototypical semantic functions.Because English and Chinese sensory adjectives differ in the cognitive scannings of semantic functions and the experience changes they represent.With the changes of their work and lives,English and Chinese speakers adjust the semantic functions of sensory adjectives to express new experiences.To summarize,English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories differ in the diachronic changes of prototypical features,because English and Chinese language systems have divergent developments of cognitive scannings and Cultural Models of sensory experiences.In summary,the prototypes of English and Chinese sensory adjectives are the integration of cognition and culture.English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories have similar prototypes because English and Chinese language systems share commonalities in the cognitive scannings and subjectivity/objectivity construals of sensory experiences.On the other hand,the prototypes of English and Chinese sensory adjectives and their sub-categories differ to some extent,because English and Chinese have divergences in the cognitive scannings and Cultural Models of sensory experiences.Cognitive mechanisms and Cultural Models both influence the birth and development of prototypes.(4)The diachronic studies of categorizations show that English and Chinese sensory adjectives both mainly rely on metonymy for categorization.They both categorize with the metaphorical mapping from target domain to source domain,displaying the bidirectionality of metaphor.English and Chinese sensory adjectives both mainly depend on metonymy to connect with prototypicality qua best exemplars.English sensory adjectives mainly rely on the Parts of an ICM metonymy for categorization,while Chinese sensory adjectives depend on Whole ICM and Its Part(s)metonymy.English sensory adjectives depend on metonymy to connect with prototypicality qua best exemplars throughout the periods.The connections between English sensory adjectives and prototypicality qua best exemplars become more and more motivated.Chinese sensory adjectives are associated with prototypicality qua best exemplars through more types of mechanisms.In the Old Chinese period,Chinese sensory adjectives depend on metonymy,iconicity and other kinds of mechanisms to connect with prototypicality qua best exemplars.Since the Middle Chinese period,the mechanisms for connecting new words with prototypicality qua best exemplars decrease remarkably.And the connections between Chinese sensory adjectives and prototypicality qua best exemplars become less and less motivated.The aforementioned differences are due to the nature and diachronic developments of English and Chinese language systems.As a phonemic language;English borrows its alphabets all from other languages,which have no natural connection with its referents.As a morphemic language,Chinese include the characters which directly reflect Chinese ancestors' categorizations and construals of experiences.The diachronic developments of categorizations of English and Chinese sensory adjectives have to meet people's expressions of experiences and agree with the self-regulatory mechanisms of English and Chinese language systems.English extend the words by derivation,while Chinese prolong the syllable by compounding.Both derivation and compounding are in line with the nature of English and Chinese language systems,as an inflectional language or a morphemic language.From a cognitive perspective,the categorization of derivational words depends on the Parts of an ICM metonymy,while the categorization of compounds relies on the Whole ICM and Its Part(s)metonymy.The similarities and differences for the diachronic development of categorizations of English and Chinese sensory adjectives are caused by interacting factors such as the nature of language systems,expressions of experiences,languge contact and cognitive mechanisms.On the whole,English and Chinese sensory adjectives have similarities and differences in their prototypes and categorizations,because English and Chinese language systems have commonalities and divergences in their cognitive mechanisms and Cutural Models concerning sensory experiences.The similarities and differences also reflect the converging and differing requirements,such as the developments of English and Chinese language systems,languge contact and social growth.Thus,the prototypes and categorizations of English and Chinese sensory adjectives result from the “syllergy” of internal and external factors of English and Chinese language systems.Based on the previous studies,the present research makes contributions in the following aspects.(1)Based on prototype theory,we contrast the prototypes and categorizatons of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.We make use of Cognitve grammar and Ideation Base to explain the commonalities and differences in the prototypes and categorizatons of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.The theoretical base covers both the synchronic and diachronic studies and provides theoretical insights for contrastive studies of semantic categories.(2)The present study combines corpora and questionnaires to contrast the prototypical members of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.The combination improves the reliability and validity of results and offers methodological implications for contrastive studies of semantic categories.(3)In the present study,frequency,markedness,diachronic studies and language acquisition studies are examined to contrast and explain the prototypes of English and Chinese sensory adjectives.The research design provides guidelines for contrastive studies of semantic categories. |
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