A Cognitive Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Comparative Categories

After reviewing the former studies correlated with this research, this essay basesitself on the practice of teaching Chinese as a foreign language and tries to set up thecomparative category for Chinese by comparing the comparative sentences of Chineseand English under the direction of cognitive linguistic theories. It first applies the theoryof "bounded and unbounded" to investigate the function of comparative sentences, whichis at last found to be turning "unbounded quantity" to "bounded quantity". Comparativesentences functions by connecting the "relative quantity" to "absolute quantity" andtransforming them under some definite language circumstances with the "comparativequantity" it expresses in the sentence. In addition, the phenomena of repelling in the samebound and crossing the bound are exposed. Meanwhile, this essay observes the salienceduring the creation of the comparative sentences of Chinese and English, guided by the"salience theory" of "image schema theory", and then comes to the conclusion that thereare differences during the processes of the two languages' salience, from which the factthat compared item should be taken as compliment but not adverbial modifier is proved.The last but not the less important theory is the prototype theory, which is applied to setup the comparative category for Chinese. Furthermore, this essay compares the charactersof both languages' comparative categories and points out the differences between them,by which teachers may better and more effectively prevent and correct the mistakes madeby foreign students, especially English-speaking ones, during their Chinese studies.