Studies On The Spatial Adjective "Shēn"-The Chinese Equivalence Of The Word Meaning 'Deep'

The way people recognize as the real world is based on the concept of space.The metaphor for space is the foundation of many non-spatial concepts in Chinese.Often in Chinese,non-spatial concepts are expressed in metaphoric sense of spatial concept and it is possible for one specific spatial adjective to convey a range of meanings.Therefore, the importance of spatial adjective studies in metaphor as a whole cannot be stressed enough.The Chinese equivalence of the word meaning 'deep' is called 'shen'.Semantically, 'shen' is a spatial adjective which has two directions -[+downwards]and[+inwards]. What makes 'shen' unique in comparison to other spatial adjectives is its characteristics in metaphors and metonymy,as long as its structures in morphology and syntax.These special features and applications of 'shen' often makes it difficult for students who study Chinese as a foreign language to understand.This dissertation has selected spatial adjective 'shen' to conduct a detailed analysis based on the cognitive linguistic theories in its attempts to deal with the following matters:1) To determine and categorize different types of semantic meaning that 'shen' possesses,the types and the ways metaphor and metonymy appear in each situation; 2)To explore some of the adjectives that have the family resemblance to 'shen' and to found out the differences and similarities among them;3)To found out characteristics of 'shen' in terms of morphology and syntax;4)To found out the symmetry and asymmetry between 'shen' and 'qian' - which is the Chinese equivalence of the word meaning 'shallow' - and to investigate reasons behind them;5)To investigate the universals and the uniqueness between 'shen' and its Korean equivalence,'(?)[kipta]'.This dissertation is divided into seven chapters.First chapter is an introduction of the dissertation where it introduces reasons and purposes for this research,its principle theories,research methods and some other related theories in the field.Chapter 2 and 3 deal with detailed analysis of 'shen' from the cognitive perspective and explore fundamental,metonymic and metaphoric meanings of 'shen' and make comparisons between 'shen' and its family relevances.Chapter 4 investigates 'shen"s characteristics in terms of morphology and syntax and Chapter 5 discusses the symmetry and asymmetry between 'shen' and 'qian'.Chapter 6 compares the universals and uniqueness 'shen' and '(?)[kipta]'.Chapter 7 is the last chapter of the dissertation where a conclusion of the studies has been drawn.Some of the new attempts of this dissertation in the subject area include: 1)conducting semantic analysis of 'shen' and indicating developments of semantic meaning in terms of three transitions;2) Finding out adjectives which have family resemblance to 'shen' and indicating the differences in semantic,application and relationship among them;3) Summing up the principles in word formation of'shen' and other monosyllable adjectives by applying the concepts of dimension and the semantic characteristics of 'shen';4)Fully describing symmetriy and asymmetry between 'shen' and 'qian' and providing appropriate explanations;5)Conducting a contrastive analysis between 'shen' and '(?)[kipta]' in terms of semantic and grammatical characteristics and providing explanations in regards to cognition by adapting synesthetic metaphors.The reasons for why this dissertation is valuable lies in:1) its attempt to conduct systematic analysis towards one specific adjective - the study did not end in describing the matters,but also discovered the reasons behind them,which made a significant contribution towards the subject area;2) its approaches and outcomes of the study in 'shen' has made it possible to expand its applications to overall categories of spatial adjective;3) the study in 'shen' can also be applied to typology studies in spatial adjective;4) results of studies in semantic,morphology and syntax can be adapted as a ground theory to current teaching Chinese as a foreign language field.