The Ethnic Differences On The Construal Of Water

This paper, with the compound words and idioms on water in English, Mandarin Chinese and Guilin dialect as its language materials, aims to analyze cross-linguistically the ethnic difference on ways of construal to the same entity water in terms of the semantic extension of water. Based on the configurational structure theory, the author represents the internal language structure of water in the form of grammar complex and expounds the cognitive operations triggered by the corresponding grammar complexes. The research findings are as follows:(i) Within the plexity category, water is prototypically multiplex. There is unit-excerpting triggered by different grammar complex in English, Mandarin and Guilin dialect;(ii) Within the boundary category, water is prototypically unbounded. There is boundarization triggered by different grammar complex in English, Mandarin and Guilin dialect;(iii)In the category of dividedness, water is prototypically continuous. There is the discretizing operation in English, mandarin Chinese and Guilin dialect;(iv) In the category of degree of extension, water is prototypically an unbounded extent. Reduction operation to water exists in English, mandarin Chinese and Guilin dialect;(v) With regards to the distribution patterns of water, they are different in English, Mandarin Chinese and Guilin dialect. The distribution patterns water in English shares are one-way non-resettable, multiple, steady and gradient. In Mandarin Chinese, similarly, they are one-way non-resettable, multiple, steady and gradient. As to the distribution patter of water in Guilin dialect, they are multiplex and steady;(vi) When it comes to the category of axiality, both punctifying and terminalizing cognitive operation exist and is triggered by different complexes in English, mandarin Chinese and Guilin dialect. Therefore, the author in this paper proves the fact that different expressions of language profiles different ways of construal of different ethic communities to the same entity water.The ways of language expressions are nation-unique, the language of a nation could determine ways of thinking of its users. Differences in ways of thinking result from different cultures in nature. In this paper, the author expounds cultural differences of different nations through comparing ways of construal of different ethnic communities to the same external entity water within the six categories of plexity, boundedness, dividedness, extension of degree, pattern of distribution and axiality. As to the cross-linguistic analysis on the relationships between different ethnic languages and their corresponding modes of thinking, configurational structure theory does not only avoid the inferences caused by differences of language types but also provide a systematic framework and a new perspective of such topics.The researching findings would be conducive to lexicographers to provide correct examples for each entry with its corresponding introduction in order to avoid negative transfer in lexical collocation or association for dictionary users and to help them to understand the asymmetrical correspondence of polysemy between different languages and cultures.The limitation of this research is that the exhaustablity of words on water in Guilin dialect could not be supported because there is no systematic and authoritative corpus on Guilin dialect.