Symmetry And Asymmetry Research On "Post" And "Post"

As a set of direction words which have the opposite meanings," qian "(前) and" hou"(后) have the phenomenon of symmetry and asymmetry. In this article, we select "qian"(前) and" hou"(后) as the search range, trying to investigate the symmetry and asymmetry phenomenon of these two words by the means of markedness theory. First of all,based on the frequency standard of the markedness theory, we made a research on the relevant words,trying to analyze the phenomenon of symmetry and asymmetry on the level of words. On this condition,we divided the relevant words of "qian"(前) and" hou"(后)into two categories which are "symmetrical distribution" and "asymmetrical distribution",each of them also divided into even small categories according to its meanings. Secondly,based on the distribution standard, we investigate the phenomenon of symmetry and asymmetry between these two words according to their grammartical features. As two direction words," qian "(前) and " hou"(后). have the similar grammartical features as well as their own typical usage. Based on these two chapters,we come to the conclusion that "qian"(前)is the "unmarked iterm" and "hou"(后) is the "marked iterm".Finally, the last part mainly explain the reasons of asymmetry under relevant "metaphor" theory. According to the target, we divided the metaphor into three types:metaphor for time;metaphor for social status;metaphor for state. With the analysis of data and corpus, each of the metaphor can explain the phenomenon of symmetry and asymmetry of "qian"(前) and "hou"(后).It can help us deeply understand this linguistic phenomenon.