| Humans possess five synaesthesia pathways in terms of physiology.Human cognition serves as the foundation of human language,and synaesthesia is a significant area of study in biology and medicine.Synaesthesia is formed when sour,sweet,bitter,spicy,and salty flavors borrow from one another throughout the process of human cognition.In 1957,linguistics became the official domain for the research of synaesthesia.Since then,scholars have increasingly discovered that the process of semantic and cognitive transformation includes synaesthesia in a way that is quite universal.Since Ullmann(1964)examined and evaluated literary works,linguistic synaesthesia has steadily been recognized as a significant language phenomenon.Williams(1976)concentrated on the transfer rules of English synaesthetic vocabulary from the position of synaesthetic metaphor rather than the transfer rules of Chinese and English.This study contends that it is critical to rigorously investigate the transfer of basic gustatory adjectives in Chinese and English to understand the similarities and differences in the evolution of English and Chinese,as well as to shed light on the ensuing social factors and cognitive motives.From an ECL standpoint,this thesis develops the RPCS model(RP for cognitive reference point,C for cognitive factors,S for salience theory)with metaphor,covariance theory,the cognitive reference point,and salience as the primary framework.A total of38448 items,comprising Suān and “sour” in various eras in the form of words,phrases,and sentences,are gathered from the CCL Corpus of the Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU,and the Corpus of Historical American English(COHA)and the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA).To aid the knowledge of synaesthesia research,this study examines the cognitive aspects and social factors influencing the synaesthesia transference of Suān and “sour” with qualitative and quantitative methodologies.In general,the RPCS model has high application for examining the cognitive and social elements in synaesthetic transmission.The chosen corpus can be well explained.These are the findings of this research: First,Suān and “sour” are transferrable to the other four modalities,but the frequency and order are different.Second,data in Modern Chinese(MC)differs significantly from that in Ancient Chinese(AC),COCA,and COHA,whereas the law of transferring generally complies with the principle of cognitive distance.Third,the number of Suān transfers to multi-modalities is significantly higher than that of “sour”,demonstrating that Chinese users give more consideration to the full range of emotions during the cognitive process.In summary,the synaesthetic transfer of Suān and “sour” has been enhanced with social development and cognitive solidification,illuminating how language use is especially susceptible to both internal cognitive processes and external social effects.The RPCS model-based synaesthesia analysis shows how broadly applicable ECL is and offers a fresh analytical approach to synaesthesia research. |
