Time Of Metaphor To Explore

Spatialization metaphor is one of hot subjects in linguistic study recently. In English and Chinese, there have been numerous careful studies about it but in minority languages few. Therefore, it is meaningful to pay more attention to spatialization metaphor in minority languages.Embodiment is the character of the presecssors' thoughts. Man's body and organ are the source of their cognition, which they often project onto other abstract notions, for exemple the time. Taking spatialization metaphor in words for time in Some Sino-Tibetan Languages such as Han, Jingpho, Tibetan, and Dai languages in the paper, the author suggests a common feature-the conceptual metaphor "time is space"-exist in these languages systematically. And five categories are found: (1) time is space;(2) time is moving object;(3) time is vessel;(4) time is distance;(5) time is feature. These temporal metaphors also have their own traits-at the lexical level time is expressed variously: (1) time words in minority languages are more transparent in morphemic motivation than those in Chinese;(2) time tends to be personalized in Jingpho, Tibetan, and Dai languages;(3) vertical metaphor ("up" and "down") in Han language and especially in Tibetan language are expressed in a much richer fashion;(4) many season words in these minority languages are metonymies of the nature's feature. These traits are caused by different features and social backgrounds of various languages.