Cognitive Study Of Spatial Semantics

Space plays a crucial role in language, which exerts typically in semantics.Spatial concept is the basis of other concepts. People always tend to expressnon-spatial meaning by mapping spatial relation onto other semantic field s throughmetaphor. This thesis, setting cognitive linguistics as the framework, selects modernChinese word―li‖as the study object. It is a case study of its semantics includingmetaphor mechanism, polysemy and grammaticalization.Western spatial semantics focused on theoretical study including conceptualmetaphor, image schema and polysemy, while Chinese linguists majorly went deeplyinto diachronic study of spatial word. The objective of this thesis is to integratewestern metaphor theory with Chinese language facts. In the process of discussingmetaphor mechanism of “li” and its grammaticalization path, the metaphor theorywould be better applied. The semantic comparisons between “li” and other words areexpected to help language learners to discern their subtle difference.The thesis firstly used metaphor theory from Lakoff&Johnson to explain thebasis for the metaphorization of “li”, i.e. container metaphor. Secondly,“li” and otheractive spatial words in Chinese not only have their definite spatial meaning but alsobecome grammaticalized through various forms. So the thesis attempted to summarizethe meaning of “li”. Lastly, though different spatial words represent different imageschemas respectively, they are crossed in semantics. Through comparison and contrast,it can be seen from the process of construal that the usage is influenced by subjectivity.The results this thesis achieves primarily reveal that metaphor is the foundation ofsemantic change. By means of metaphor, the word acquires its polysemy and is finallygrammaticalized from content word to functional word. The cognitive mechanism inthe transit from topological meaning to spatial metaphor meaning is metaphorizationand the transit process, in other words, is the grammaticalization based on metaphor. Inaddition, by sorting out the relation and semantic contrast among “li” and other spatialword, the vantage point and other aspects can be found out as the contributing factor.