Contrastive Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors In Common Sensory Perception Verbs Between Chinese And English

This study, which is based on some corpora and some authoritative monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, deals with the domain of common perception verbs in two typologically different and culturally distinct languages: Chinese and English, in terms of conceptual metaphors, with a view to accounting for any possible convergence and divergence in conceptualization involving physical perception experience between the two languages. Metaphor is treated as a way of semantic extension in accordance with Cognitive Grammar semantics.The major findings of this study comprise the following:1. In both languages, there is metaphorical mapping between the domain of common perception verbs and the domains of social interaction and material world as well as the domain of cognition.2. Metaphorical mapping occurs between different perception modalities and the cognitive domain, especially the sub domain of understanding.3. In all the three noncontact perceptual domains - vision, hearing, and smell - the distinction of controlled activity and noncontrolled experience is...