Blended Space Theory And Proverb Comprehension

The proverb is the creation of masses and it has condensed people's wisdom and experience. The content of proverbs possesses the nature of economy, philosophy, sentiment, class and epoch while its form reflects the features of colloquialism, variability, refinement, artistry and nationality. According to the cognitive view, metaphor is treated as a theoretical mental construct and the universal microcognitive pancultural processes that underlie them are emphasized.Fauconnier has developed the Blended Space Theory on the basis of mental space theory. Our conceptual networks are intricately structured by mental-space mappings, which play a key role in the construction of meaning. Fauconnier has summarized 5 main characteristics of the Blended Space Theory, namely: cross-space mapping; part projection from input space; generic space; composition of the events; emergent structure. Blended space involves 4 pieces of mental space (generic space, input space I, input space II, blended space) and is a kind of dynamic, creative cognitive activity. It focuses specifically on conceptual projection as an instrument of on-line work. Its central process is conceptual .. blending. On the basis of two input mental spaces, the blending runs and produces the third space, i.e. the blended space. It draws partial structure from the two input spaces and forms the emergent structure.The Blended Space Theory can be used to analyze the meaning construction and reasoning mechanism in proverbs in a deep meticulous way. In proverb comprehension, a mental space is built up in part by recruiting structure from (possibly many) conceptual domains and from...