Contrastive Study Of Chinese Wai Compounds And English Out Compounds

Spatial concept,known as the basic type,originates from human being’s cognitive activities and is traceable in each language from various cultures.Wai and out both represent the spatial position oppositing to interior or centre in Chinese and English.Presently,most researches concerning wai and out are based on relevant cognitive linguistic theories,analyzes as well as contrasts their semantic distribution and explains cultural together with cognitive factors.However,seldom studies talk about those settled compounds comprising of wai and out.This study targets on these compounds.Collecting from numerous Chinese and English dictionaries,it analyzes those compounds’ similarities and differences from structural,semantic and conceptual blending perspectives and gives explanation in cultural and cognitive aspects.By contrasting the structure of these two types of compounds,we found out that compounds consisting of out take on more varied word formation formats and structures.Yet norminal out compounds deriving from verbal phrases indicate a higher degree of lexicalization,since norminalization happens regularly.Moreover,in verbal out compounds,although out compounds employ integrative expressions,their Chinese counterparts take analytical expressions which is due to the failure of conceptualization of predominant status in comparison in Chinese culture and its lexicalization.In terms of semantic contrast analysis,we found that wai and out basically share the same liberal sense.However,they respectively extended to some unique ones.The semantic distribution of out takes on a more diversified look.Besides,we studied X,another component in the compounds,and found out that its semantic type is more diversified in wai compounds,though X in two types of compounds share some same types.In two types of compounds,morpheme meaning can directly and holisticly or directly and partially or indirectly express compound meaning.In wai compounds,some morphemes may lose their liberal senses as well.In Chinese compounds,wai expresses negative meaning,which means it possesses minus parameter in image schema.Whereas,in English compounds,out expresses positive meaning,demonstrating a plus parameter.Finally,two conceptual blending mechanisms,truncated combination and mixed combination,both work in two types of compounds.However,more derives from truncated combination.There exist four hierarchies of degree of conceptual blending in two types of compounds.Wai compounds mainly belong to low hierarchy,while out compounds mostly attribute to high hierarchy.