Empirical Study On Cognitive Semantic Model Of English Dimensional Adjectives And Chinese Dimensional Adjectives

This thesis focuses on studying sixteen dimensional adjective pairs from the vision of cognitive linguistic and using empirical study method to compare English dimensional and Chinese dimensional adjectives to find out their similarities and differences in intralingual and interlingual range.And this thesis tries to explain the reason by using construal theory.It comes to the findings:Firstly,the common features of the English native speakers and Chinese native speakers on English dimensional adjectives and Chinese dimensional adjectives are in cognitive semantic model:the model of EDA?English Dimensional Adjective?“big/small”and CDA?Chinese Dimensional Adjective?“da???/xiao???”is circle and sphere,which has no restriction on dimension;the model of EDA“wide?broad?/narrow”andCDA“kuan???/zhai???”is plank/rectangle?horizontal?/river,which pays attention to horizontal dimension;the model of EDA“deep/shallow”and CDA“shen???/qian???”is the vertical distance from a plane?or the open plane of a container?to point of a container,which focus on vertical dimension;the model of EDA“high/tall”and CDA“gao???”is buildings and the height of a person,which focus on vertical dimension and directs from the bottom to the top;the model of EDA“far/near?close?”and CDA“yuan???/jin???”is the smaller/bigger size of object which indicates whether the object is near or far/distance,and the other model of it is the distance between two objects,which focus on both vertical and horizontal dimensions;the model of EDA“thick₁/thin₁”and CDA“hou???/bao???”is flat things like paper and book,which represents the smallest vertical dimension?the distance between the upper and the lower sides?;the model of EDA“long/short”and CDA“chang???/duan???”is line and line segment,which pay more attention on both vertical and horizontal dimensions.And both of them use comparative method to conduct the cognition.Secondly,the semantic cognitive models of CDA“cu???/xi???”and“hou???/bao???”are the cylinder and the flat things like paper/book,but the semantic cognitive models of EDA“thick₁/thin₁”and“thick₂/thin₂”are not so clear as the semantic cognitive models of CDA“cu???/xi???”and“hou???/bao???”.The cylinder and the flat things are used simultaneously to describe EDA“thick₁/thin₁”and“thick₂/thin₂”.Thirdly,with the development of language,the number of images selected by the advanced group,intermediate group,and primary group of English native speakers and Chinese native speaker presented a decreasing trend and gradually concentrate on typical semantic cognitive model.Finally,cognitive motivations are found behind the above findings:the differences and similarities of cognitive semantic model on E/C dimensional adjectives between English and Chinese native speakers mainly come from the embodiment cognition of human beings and the cognitive method,such as perspective,salience and specificity.