| Motion is one of the earliest, most basic and most pervasive experiences in our life. Motion, as one of the most basic concepts of human, should be coded in all languages in different ways and should be mapped to other conceptual domains. Therefore, motion event offers us a window to study language and cognition, which has important theoretical and practical significance. Based on the theoretical background of cognitive linguistics, and Talmy's motion-event frame theory, the dissertation has made a preliminary research of language encoding of motion events and its motivation in English and Chinese. This study further validates the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, which claims language is gradually formed through cognitive processing based on the embodied experience and is product of interaction between subjective and objective world, reflecting how the speakers of different languages construal and perceive the real world.Chapter I This chapter presented the basic tenets of cognitive language. Language is a coding system of real world. Language does not directly correspond to the real world, but there exists a interlayer named cognitive construction which links language expression with the real world. In this cognitive mediation layer, a variety of concepts and conceptual structure are formed based on the real world. The real world is reflected to language expressions through this cognitive mediation layer. so, language expressions cannot fully correspond to the real world. Different language communities have different thinking ways, and thus code the same world in different ways.Chapter II This chapter provided a brief overview of the different formulations by Fillmore, Langacker and Talmy, pointing out their advantages and disadvantages. Talmy's framework provides a more fully-specified treatment of motion and can maintain consistency in cross-language application. Therefore, this dissertation has adopted Talmy's analytical framework to make a study of the conceptualization and language expressions of motion events in English and mandarin.Chapter III This chapter explored the cognitive connotation of figure and ground. In addition to the property of movability hierarchy, the assignment of figure and ground has event dependent temporary features. The language representation of figure and ground has independent lexical items, which belong to the same grammatical category. Their syntactic position shows Figure-over Ground principle. The prominent concept in human consciousness corresponds to the priority of role assignments. Syntactic position of the ground in Chinese is flexible due to the different Orientation Value, which shows the different scanning pattern.Chapter IV This chapter first analyzed the meaning framework of path, which constitutes the five conceptual components:Vector, conformation, direction, dimension and perspective. A typical use of English prepositions and adverbs are typically used to express path. Directional verbs, verbs and prepositions are used to express path. The construal of path profiles the shape and dimensions of the ground in English. Deictic words "hither" and "thither" are widely used in Chinese path representation.Chapter V Semantic Conceptual information of Manner-of-Motion Verbs in English This chapter is devoted to investigating what types of semantic conceptual information are encoded in manner of motion verbs on the basis of previous literature. According to the semantic conceptual information encoded in manner of motion verbs, English manner verbs are divided into two categories:event-oriented manner and figure-oriented manner.ChapterVI Semantic Conceptual Information of Manner-of-Motion Verbs in Mandarin and its Lexicalization Patterns English and Chinese differ in how they lexically express manner of motion. The various types of meaning components lexicalized in English manner verbs are not necessarily rendered by monomorphemic verbs in Mandarin. Mandarin renders English manner verbs by various means, such as compounding, polymorphemic words, or specific constructions. There are a rich of manner verbs describing the gait of walking. Mandarin uses adverbial phrases, compounds and other structures for expressing the same meanings. Most figure-related properties are not lexicalized in verbs. English has a higher degree of lexicalization than Mandarin.ChapterVII This chapter is mainly concerned with typological issues in motion event descriptions. Based on the obtained corpus-based data, Chinese is both verb-framed and satellite-framed language.These two encodings are universal in Chinese. Verb-framed pattern is more popular.
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