A Cognitive Study Of Fictive Motion Expressions In English And Chinese

Fictive motion expressions are those whose basic reference is to motion, but which actually describe stationary things. The word "fictive" is adopted to represent people’s imaginative ability. Talmy may have given the most detailed discussion, but we find Langacker provides a better explanation for the metal representation of fictive motion. The thesis elaborates the mechanism underlying fictive motion with the help of cognitive grammar. The subjective nature of human mind lays the base, and the disengaged experiences implemented in extrinsic circumstances gives rise to fictive motion.The thesis groups fictive motion expressions into three categories. First, the subject moves; second, the subject’s sight moves; third, sight moves with the subject. According to the classification, the thesis investigates fictive motion expressions involving "road". By comparing the corpus, the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in "road" fictive motion expressions are revealed."Road" FM expressions can be found in both languages. They show similar restrictions in the first category. However the two exhibit difference in quantity and distribution. First, English exceeds Chinese in the number of "road" FM expressions. Second, some types cannot be found in the Chinese corpus. Third, certain verbs exhibit a frequency that is much higher than others in English; however, in Chinese it is comparatively equal.Fictive motion comes from the subjective nature of human mind, so the pervasive existence of it is not surprising. The common restriction found in the first category can be explained from Gestalt psychology. If the ground is too big, the reverse of figure and ground is not likely to happen. The differences showed in the second and third categories result from the different scanning preference. English speaker use more sequential scanning, so they adopt more FM expressions. Some verbs are used frequently in fictive expressions, so that they form extrinsic meanings, i.e. be grammaticalized. This explains why in English "road" FM sentences, some verbs exhibit a higher frequency while in Chinese the distribution is comparatively even.