A Comparative Study On The Ethno-Specified Meanings Of Chinese And Japanese Animal Words

Ⅰ. As an important part of a nation’s lexical system, animal words have rich ethno-specified meanings and are an important avenue to understand a nation’s cultural history, social history and spiritual world. There exist extremely abundant animal words in developed language systems throughout the world. There are a large number of animal words in Chinese and Japanese.Chinese animal words consist of three categories:basic animal words, complex and derivative words, and those words with basic animal words serving as the core. Influenced by the orthodox and standard culture of the Han nationality’s ideological concept, the animal words derived from the Han nationality are stronger in word formation, while the loanwords are comparatively weaker.Japanese animal words consist of four parts:words of Japanese origin, Chinese words, loanwords and mixed words. Among them, Chinese words, created by adopting Chinese characters and lexical codes, have distinct characteristics of the Japanese nationality and are the main object for the comparative research of this dissertation.Ⅱ. The motivation of words is the gene of the lexical system and the research on it is to seek the generic principle behind the etymological meanings and the foundation for the appellation of objects and phenomena.1. Japanese and Chinese animal words have similar word-formation motivations, including motivations of function, similarity and symbol. They also have different motivations based on their respective national languages; in particular, as the Japanese believe in poly-theism, there exists word-formation motivation based on their customs and beliefs.2. Some animal words are formed by their functions in the human society; therefore, understanding their naming motivation is helpful in investigating human activities and cultural relics in various societies.3. There exist certain similarities between animals’physiological mechanisms, shapes, actions, and the objects and phenomena of human society. In the course of the formation and semantic extension of animal words, similarity motivation is the true reflection of human cognition and thinking and thus can embody a nation’s thinking mode.4. The semantic expressions of symbolic words reflect symbolic meanings mainly via trope or onomatopoeia. Such symbolic meanings always correspond to a nation’s traditional cultural psyche; therefore, the symbolic meanings of animal words are endowed with profound cultural meanings. Based on this point, the symbolic meanings can be regarded as the associative meanings with rich cultural information.III. Animal words, as an important part of "cultural words", imply significant ethnic cultural information and serve as carriers and mirror images of a culture.1. Both the Han nationality and Japanese nationality have totem worship. However, the totem worship of the Han nationality is not diversified enough, mostly centering on "dragon, phoenix, kylin and tortoise". On the other hand, the Japanese nationality’s animism results in abundant relations and images, which in turn generate plenty of animal words and usages.2. The thinking of different nations has both commonality and particularities. Chinese and Japanese animal words mostly express people’s subjective wills by concrete images and endow these images with human spiritualism. However, the evaluation of animals in Chinese is from the dialectical nature of Chinese thinking, while that in Japanese is from projection psychology.3. The Han nationality’s culture belongs to mainland culture. It holds together the social order by ethics based on feudal-religious society and emphasizes ethical education. It ethicizes both society and nature. Therefore, such ethical ideas as "filial piety, fraternal respect, loyalty, honesty, propriety, righteousness, integrity, sense of shame" are transplanted to the animal world. Japan is a marine island country with the sea as an important channel with other countries, and thus the association in linguistic expression is mainly related to marine animals.Ⅳ. The correlated system of Chinese and Japanese animal words includes the following four aspects:1. As China and Japan are close neighbors, some animal words in both languages present common ethno-specified semantic features. 2. There exist differences in the geographical environments, living habits, historical conditions and religious beliefs of both nations, so Chinese and Japanese may use different animal images in expressing similar meanings. Thus both nations have different idioms when conveying the same meanings.3. During the long developing course of language, both nationalities have formed their own modes of thinking on the evaluation of birds and beasts. Sometimes, an animal has absolutely different associative meanings in Chinese and Japanese.4. Both nationalities’views of objects are similar on the one hand and different on the other; therefore, some of the Chinese and Japanese animal words are similar and some are totally different in meaning.V. The production and understanding of the ethno-specified meanings of animal words are inseparable from the cognitive and cultural models. Chinese and Japanese animal words have their similarities in the application of semantic extension because ancestors of all nationalities have commonalities and universalities in cognition and modes of thinking. Human beings have the same physical constitution and perceptual organs; therefore, they have the same perceptual and cognitive capabilities in the face of the same material world and can easily acquire similar conceptual structure.VI. The cultural motivation and cognitive psychology motivation found in the comparison between Chinese animal words and Japanese ones are significant in translation, second language teaching and cross cultural communication.1. The difficulty of translating animal words with cultural connotations lies in the discrepancy or absence of ethno-specified meanings between the source language and the target language. Nowadays, an important criterion of evaluating the quality of translation is whether the cultural information and image of the original text are truly and effectively transferred and whether the translation has made readers comprehend the cultural connotations of the source language. Therefore, we should spare no efforts to lay bare the ethno-specified meanings of animal words, and adopt such techniques as literal translation with annotation, literal translation plus explanation and paraphrase.2. As a part of applied linguistics, teaching Chinese as a foreign language abounds in cultural connotations. For learners, the ethno-specified meanings of Chinese, like pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, are also a kind of knowledge which is only different in both form and content. Consequently, during teaching Chinese as a foreign language to Japanese, comparative study is needed to reveal the cultural elements of the ethno-specified meanings of the Chinese animal words. Such elements may directly influence communication and give rise to misunderstanding and conflicts. This research can make the communication more efficient, practical and easier to handle.3. The ethno-specified meanings of Chinese and Japanese animal words contain certain cultural information and such information is usually implied. When an animal word has different meanings in the Chinese and Japanese cultures, it may cause conflict in cross cultural communication. With the knowledge of Chinese and Japanese animal words and their ethno-specified meanings, and interpretation of the motivation of the ethno-specified meanings, we can understand the differences of the two cultures. The more we understand it, the more successful the communication will be.