Spatial And Temporal Cognition Of Qian/Hou In Chinese And Before/After In English

Space and time are two closely related domains. Time, as an abstract concept, is usually cognized through the concrete domain of space. Therefore, most of the locatives in a language can be used both spatially and temporally. Qian/hou is such a pair of locatives in Chinese. Based on Levinson’s spatial reference framework theory and Lakoff’s TIME AS SPACE Metaphor,this thesis tries to make a comparative study on the cognition of the spatial and temporal meaning of qian/hou in Chinese and before/after English. This study aims to answer the following questions.1. What are the cognitive spatial meanings of qian/ hou in Chinese and before/ after in English and are there any similarities or differences between their spatial image schemas?2. What are the cognitive temporal meaning of qian/ hou in Chinese and before/ after in English and are there any similarities or differences between their temporal image schemas?To answer these research questions, I first randomly picked 300 sentences with qian/hou from the Corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) respectively and 300 sentences with before/after in British National Corpus (BNC) respectively. All the sentences are classified according to their spatial and temporal meanings. And the image schema of each sentence, the semantic components of each schema and the conceptual metaphors of temporal meaning are presented. The results show that 1) In the domain of space, although all the four locatives can be used both spatially and temporally, the image schemas of the corresponding pairs differ between Chinese and English.Qian and hou in Chinese can be used to present a part and whole relationship between figure and ground either in position or in sequence, however before and after in English cannot be used in this way.Also in Chinese, the figure and ground can be either separable or inseparable, either closely attached or widely apart; however in English, the figure and the ground must be distinct objects with distance between them. 2) As for the temporal meaning of the four locatives, time is conceived as a sequence of time points or events. Both qian and before can refer to a time point or period earlier than the reference time while hou and after refer to a time point or period later than the reference time. Despite the similarities, their specific temporal image schemas are different. Qian and hou in Chinese can present a part and whole relationship in time, but before and after cannot.Qian and hou in Chinese can integrate both spatial and temporal meaning in one case (e.g. Qiantu-future, Qianjing-outlook), but this usage does not exist in the temporal meaning of before and after in English. This study combines the traditional componential analysis with cognitive analysis of metaphor, thus expands the research perspective and fields of orientational metaphor. The findings also provide significant guidance for foreign language instruction.