Contrastive Analysis Of Words Of Visual Perception In Chinese And English Languages: A Cognitive Inquiry

This paper is a contrastive analysis on the semantic extensions of the words of visual perception in English and Chinese languages based on the metaphorical and metonymical theories as well as cognitive frame semantic theories. Cognitive linguistics has made explicit the importance of embodiment in concept formation and abstractive thinking. The influence of visual perception in concept formation and abstractive thinking is also reflected in the visual words. In both Chinese and English languages, words of visual perception demonstrate rich semantic extensions based on metaphor and metonymy. The purpose of our study is to compare the semantic extensions in these two languages. Taking into consideration the interaction between man and environment, man and society as well as the relation between the sensorimotor system and intellectual cognition, we classify the semantic extension of the visual words into five domains, namely physical environment domain, temporospatial domain, social interactive domain, affective (emotions and attitudes) domain as well as intellectual cognitive domain. Based on dictionary and corpus data, we discussed the different semantic extensions of visual nouns, visual adjectives and visual verbs in these five domains.With regard to visual nouns, we mainly discusse the semantic extensions and usages of Chinese visual organ―yan-jing‖and the disyllabic and multisyllabic words and phrases containing visual organ―yan‖and―mu‖. We then compare these words with the English word for visual organ―eye‖. We find that in both languages, visual organ seldom appears in the visual domain unless specificity is added, as it is self-evident to use eyes to make visual perception. Therefore, visual words are more commonly used to denote its relation with physiology, such as consciousness; with emotion, such as fear and astonishment, and with thinking. The visual organ in both languages can extend to all the five domains that we have named. But there are far more Chinese compounds containing―yan‖that can enter physical environment domain and affective domain. More Chinese words and compounds are used to name other objects and eye-like shapes and small holes in the physical world. This is probably because the pictographic nature of Chinese characters makes people more liable to spot the resemblance in shapes. Also, more Chinese expressions containing visual organs can show attitude (either respect or disrespect) which is a clue that Chinese people take more emphasis on treating different people with different attitude.In visual adjectives, we mainly compare the Chinese disyllabic and multi-syllabic words containing―mang‖and―xia‖(both words meaning the loss of eye sight) with English word―blind‖. We notice that because of the loss of eye sight, such words almost all extends into intellectual cognitive domain, meaning unable to make rational choices and judgments. The more literal Chinese word―mang‖corresponds better with English―blind‖in its semantic extensions, while the more colloquial Chinese word―xia‖tends to combine with words related to language, meaning what one says is wildly ungrounded and unreliable, emphasizing the loss of credibility due to the loss of vision.As for visual verbs, we classify them into three types, namely active, experiential and descriptive verbs, each emphasizing activity, result and subjective evaluation. We classify and describe the Chinese compounds and phrases containing the most important verbs of seeing including―kan‖,―jian‖,―shi‖,―guan‖,―wang‖and―gu‖. We then compare the semantic extensions of the Chinese visual verbs with the English verbs―look‖and―see‖. We find that active verbs tend to extend into temporospatial domain and affective domain through the different ways and directions of looking. This is demonstrated both in Chinese and English. In Chinese, both active verbs and experiential verbs can extend into social interactive domain, while in English only experiential verbs can. The semantic extension into the intellectual cognitive domain in English is mainly realized by the experiential verb―see‖, while in Chinese, it is the verb-resultative compound (V-R compound) and verb-directional compound (V-D compound) that get to extend into intellectual cognitive domain, emphasizing certain effort is needed to reach understanding.We notice it is a general phenomenon that visual words in both Chinese and English can extend into intellectual cognitive domain, based on the mapping from visual competence to intellectual cognitive competence. Therefore, after referring to the research and development in visual neural physiology over the past thirty years, we propose that the mapping from the visual perceptive competence to intellectual cognitive competence is also structured, which includes the mapping from visual attention to intellectual attention, visual selectivity to intellectual selectivity, visual categorization to intellectual categorization as well as from visual recognition to intellectual recognition (understanding). Besides, the prerequisites of visual perception, namely light and perspective, are also mapped onto intellectual domain to be closely related to cognition.To describe the difference in syntax realization between Chinese and English visual verbs, we took examples from the appearance frame in the FrameNet and marked Chinese sentences containing the descriptive verb―kan shang qu‖and compare it with the English counterpart―look‖. We see that the appearance frame in both languages has the phenomenon as the external argument while the characteristics of the phenomenon are being described. However, when it comes to the appraisal (judgment) of the phenomenon, Chinese tends to have the transition after the appraisal, indicating that the phenomenon is not what it looks like. This reveals that Chinese people believe the realization of the truth needs to see through the superficial disguise and also explains why there is no Chinese equivalent―I see‖to mean―I know‖. Because in Chinese,―seeing‖does not necessarily means―knowing‖We have seen that there are commonalities in the extension of the visual words in the two languages. The ways of extension are physiologically based, motivated and structured. But the difference in cultural tradition and manner of thinking also leads to different profile while extending to different domains.