What Blocks Metaphorical Extension?

This dissertation makes a comparative study of Chinese and English physical quality adjective predicatives mainly on the basis of British National Corpus (BNC) and Beiing University Modern Mandarin Corpus (BUMMC). The comparison and contrast is mainly made from two perspectives: conceptual domains projected by the adjectives at predicative position (experiential domains such as fruits, abstract domains such as people and their feelings, events and states, etc.); formal forms of these adjectives and their predicative constructions. The purpose is to explore the mechanisms and constraints underlying metaphorical extensions of Chinese and English physical quality adjectives used as predicatively.The choice of physical quality adjectives like "suan" and its English equivalent "sour" (suan-sour, tian-sweet, ku-bitter, la-spicy/hot, leng-cold, re-hot, liang-cool, nuan-warm, ying-hard, ruan-soft, da-big, xiao-small) used as predicatives are mainly based on following justifications: (1) Typological studies show that Adjective is the word class that displays biggest cross-language differences. The recategorization of adjectives (i.e. Non-prototypical usages of one word class display features of another word class) is a field that attracts most attention(Wetzer 1992, 1996; Hengeveld 1992). The typical feature of English predicative adjectives is that they require the concordance of copula verbs and they typically appear in SCC construction, while adjectives in other languages like Chinese could be recategorized with the help of lexical and syntactic means (Beck 2002). (2) Predicative clauses could show whether and how constructions would influence metaphorical extensions besides conceptual and cultural factors. (3) The embodiment theme of cognitive linguistics acknowledges human experiences, esp. bodily experiences as the basis for metaphorical mapping. Therefore, physical quality adjectives that embody human experience and express abstract concepts could best reveal disparities as well as similarities.It is found that despite existing literature on the conceptual factors like prototypical image schemas and cultural scripts, differences in adjective predicative constructions and adjective compound formations can also lead to the different ways and directions of metaphorical extensions between Chinese and English. One explanation for this could be the complex facets of human experiences that influence abstract extension, which may include language experiences besides embodied and cultural experiences. Different languages rely on these factors to different degrees.The availability of different constructions in which adjectives are used predicatively is another factor that causes differences between Chinese and English metaphorical extension. English is shown to rely heavily on metonymic procecesses in rearranging its predicate argument structures while at the same time keeping formally one and the same form of the predicative expression. The other languages like German and Hungarian tend to formally indicate different arrangements in predicate argument structure by using formally different predicative expressions (Szabo & Brdar2004: 321). Mandarin Chinese is similar to German and Hungarian in that it also relies more on formal arrangements rather than conceptual and semantic extensions. First of all, Chinese adjectives are less dependent on verbs to form argument structure in comparison with English adjectives; Secondly, Chinese adjectives can be recategorized as verbs or nouns in particular constructions, which results in the varieties of Chinese adjective predicatives instead of single SCC (subject + Copula + Complement) construction. This feature could influence the direction and richness of metaphorical extensions of Chinese and English predicative adjectives.Based on the analysis of BNC and BUMMC search results, this dissertation proposes the Intrinsic Homogeneity Hypothesis, i.e. the more homogeneous the Chinese and English equivallent adjectives are in their prototypical image schemas, cultural scripts, adjective formation and argument predicative constructions, the more similar their metaphorical extensions would be; the more homogeneous particular adjective is, the higher the predictability of its metaphorical extensions. Factors of intrinsic homogeneity include prototypical experiences and image schemas, cultural scripts, predicative constructions and adjective word formations like disyllabic adjectives in Chinese.