| Based on our view that human conceptualization has a determining effect on syntax, which is inspired by Tai's cognition-based functional approach to grammar, we investigated the productivity of ontological metaphor in Chinese. Ontological metaphor, one species of Lakoff type conceptual metaphor, is relevant to syntax because by viewing abstractions as entities it partly determines what notions are nominalized.;Comparing known examples of ontological metaphor in English with analogous examples in Chinese, we find that Chinese resists conceptualizing verbal expressions, e.g., activities, as nominals. Where activities appear as containers in English, they appear as adverbial clauses of time in Chinese. Where activities are construed as process, and are thus more amenable to nominalization, they appear with zhong 'center/middle' but not with li 'in'. Events may be objects, but not container objects, suggesting a whole-part metaphor for the constituents of events rather container-contained. Metaphorical containers that do appear in Chinese must have a physical basis, e.g., as substances or entities but not as abstractions. Even for conceptualization of physical spaces that are already nominals, container remains less productive in Chinese. Chinese selects nei, expressing interiority, zhong, expressing middle/center, or shang, showing two-dimensional space, but not li, which would express three-dimensional space, i.e., true container. With reference to Lyons' substantive universals for parts of speech, Chinese is thus less inclined to ascribe first-order features--having constant perceptual properties, occupying 3-dimensional space, and being subject to individualization--to higher order notions. Related to the non-productivity of container metaphor is the non-productivity of Reddy's conduit metaphor for communication. Personification, ascribing agentive quality to nominals, is also less productive in Chinese. Finally, in both languages, TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor is productive, although Chinese occasionally represents time along a vertical axis versus the horizontal axis in English.;We claim that ontological metaphor is less productive because there is a coherent linguistic conceptualization in Chinese that resists objectification generally. This conceptualization is coherent with whole-part metaphor, and a version of Hansen's mass-noun hypothesis. We recommend that coherence be the test for judging claims about conceptualizations, metaphoric or otherwise, that may determine syntactic patterns in Chinese. |
