A Comparative Study Of Mongolian And Chinese Animal Proverbs

From the perspective of cultural linguistics and cognitive linguistics,this paper makes a comparative study of animal proverbs in Mongolian(modern Mongolian Kalkha dialect)and Chinese.This paper consists of seven parts,including introduction,four main chapters,summary and references.The introduction is composed of motivations for selecting the topic,literature review,the purpose of the research and research methodologies.It explains the significance and contributions of the topic to the existing literature both home and abroad.Proverbs are short and concise phrases widely spread among people.They are results of the practical observations and daily experiences accumulated by human beings in various times.It has strong knowledge which is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of a nation and spiritual and cultural heritages.It contains philosophies of a nation and scientific knowledge,reflecting a nation’s lifestyles and values.Therefore,the comparative study of animal proverbs between Mongolian and Chinese is invaluably important to the culture of Mongolian and Han nationalities.On the one hand,although extensive researches on Mongolian proverb have made,there is no systematic research exist focusing on animal proverb.On the other hand,there are many famous works in the field of Chinese proverb research in relation to the proverb in other languages,but limited research has been conducted which are compared with Mongolian(Kiril)proverb.Therefore,this paper makes a comparative study of animal proverbs between Mongolian and Chinese by using the methods of statistics,semantics and culture.The paper compares the similarities and differences of the symbolic meaning,cultural connotation,grammatical structure and rhetoric characteristics of animal proverbs in these two languages,in order to achieve cultural cognitive linguistics in two countries.The first chapter is composed of three sections: the process of cultural recognition and formation of proverbs in Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs,and animal proverbs and metaphors in Mongolian and Chinese and Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs and the culture.Proverbs are formed on the basis of human’s life experience through perception and accumulation in the process of recognizing the objective world.The earliest knowledge of a man comes from his own experience.In the process of human sensory and physical contact with the objective world,human beings perceive things,locations and behaviors in the environment and become experience of the organism.Human beings have senses of vision,hearing,smell,taste and touch as well as organs for perceiving body position and state.Analyzing,demonstrating and comparing animal proverbs between Mongolian and Chinese from the cognitive perspective is the basic research method in the field of linguistics.The second chapter is about the analysis of the commonality of animal proverbs and cultural connotations in Mongolian and Chinese.This chapter is composed of two sections: the commonality of vehicle in animal proverbs in Mongolian and Chinese,and the commonality of vehicle and meaning in animal proverbs in Mongolian and Chinese.From the perspective of cultural linguistics,this chapter compares the cultural connotations of animal proverbs in Mongolian and Chinese and the greater similarities of cultural connotations in animal proverbs of these two nations are documented.The third chapter analyzes the differences of cultural connotations of animal proverbs in Mongolian and Chinese,from the perspective of cultural linguistics.The analysis is formulated in three sections: reasons for the differences between Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs,the differences of vehicle and meaning in Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs,and the zero correspondence of vehicle and meaning in Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs.More specifically,in this chapter,we focus mainly on the study of same animal proverbs in terms of vocabulary rather than meaning which have different cultural connotations.Moreover,different animal proverbs in terms of vocabulary but have similar cultural connotations are also studied in this chapter.The cultural particularity of animal image in Mongolian and Chinese proverbs consists of three sections: the special existence of animal image culture in Mongolian proverbs,the special existence of animal image culture in Chinese proverbs and the special existence form of Mongolian and Chinese proverbs.The analysis in these sections are made by comparing the special cultural connotations of animal proverb from the perspective of cultural linguistics.This chapter further studies no correspondences in either language.For example,some animal proverbs have rich connotations in Mongolian,but no correspondence in Chinese and vice versa.Chapter four makes a comparative study on the value orientation of national culture from the aspects of the differences of psychology and culture between Mongolian and Chinese animal proverbs.In this chapter,we will interpret the similarities and differences of aesthetic value orientation between Mongolian and Han nationalities in animal proverbs which are reflected in the regional acquisition,lifestyles,thinking psychology,and aesthetic orientation in animal proverbs.The summary part summarizes the problems solved in this paper.A comparative study of animal proverbs collected in Mongolian and Chinese shows that there are similarities and differences in thinking psychology,cultural cognition,aesthetic orientation and cultural connotation between the two nationalities.Therefore,such a comparative study is indispensable for the communication,economic construction and cultural prosperity of the two nationalities.