The Cognitive Research On Chinese Three-dimensional Space Locatives

As the highest frequency used words in Chinese locatives,the four groups of Three-dimensional space locatives,in Chinese: shang/xia(un/down),li/wai(in/out),qian/hou(front/back),zuo/you(left/right),have symmetrical distribution in their form,but have differences in their process of development and use: the extended meanings are asymmetry,the scope of metaphorical meanings are inconsistent,and so on.The differences above made it hard for people to learn and understand the right use of these locatives.As a result of it,this paper discusses those locatievs from the cognitive perspective,and use the theories of Categorization and Metaphor(orientational metaphor theory)to analyze the four groups of locatives,including their evolution of meaning and explanation in the specific context.The thesis has five chapters.What comes first is an introduction,which is a brief survey of the reason for this topic,the previous study of Chinese locatives,the significance of the research and in addition,the methods and corpus.Chapter one uses the Categorization theory to analyze those four groups of locatives.Combined the meanings from the dictionary and the corpus to consider the development of their word meanings.Based on this,we can generalizing their basic-level categories and extended categories.Then make an investigation of the locatives under the specific categorization.Chapter two uses the orientational metaphor theory to explain their metaphor meaning.Under the research of their word meaning,analyzing the space meaning they already have,added the meaning of time and other domains to discuss the relations of those meanings,which may helps people better understand the abstract conceptions contained in their metaphor meaning.Chapter three is the cognitive explanation of their asymmetry.Use the knowledge of cognitive language to explain the usage of those four groups of locatives.Last part summarize the thesis,in which a conclusion of the research about thosefour groups of Three-dimensional space locatives is contained,and then stating the lack of the research and the further improvement.