A Comparative Study Of Spatial Metaphor In Russian And Chinese

Metaphor is a very common phenomenon which plays a rather important role in people’s lives. It’s not only a rhetorical device but also acts as a means to understand the world.Cognitive linguists generally believe that among all kinds of metaphors spatial metaphor plays a important role for the human concept formation, most abstract concepts are constructed by spatial metaphors.The world we live is basically constituted by two things: object and space. Any objects with a shape will occupy a certain space, and distinguish themselves from others with open boundaries, the shape itself is space. The British well-known sculptor Henry Moore once said :“ I finally found the shape and space are one thing, if you can not grasp the shape, then you can not grasp the space.” Metaphor of words denoting shapes belongs to the category of spatial metaphors.Based on Spatial metaphor Theory, Prototype Category Theory and Gestalt Theory, this paper makes a comprehensive comparative study on the spatial metaphor of russian words “острый” and chinese words “尖”. At the same time, we’re trying to make a relatively reasonable explanation for many uses, and to analyze the causes of differences in terms of the cultural roots.The whole paper will be divided into three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.Introduction: including the research background, the purpose of this paper, the research significance, research methods and innovations.The main body consists of six chapters:The first chapter: the current research results at home and abroad.The second chapter: introduce the theoretical basis of the study, including Prototype Category Theory and Gestalt Theory.The third chapter: Spatial metaphor Theory and related concepts, including metaphor and related concepts, the concept and classification of spatial metaphor.The fourth chapter will focus on the semantic category of words “острый” and “尖”. Respectively, according to their dictionary definitions, use Gestalt Theory and Prototype Category Theory to describe the maps of semantic expansion of the two words.The fifth chapter is one of the most important parts of this paper. It will concentrate on the comparision between projection domain of the two words denoting shapes “острый” and “尖”, and try to find out both the similarities and differences.The sixth chapter is another important part of this paper. According to the conclusion drawn in the third chapter, this part tries to trace the root causes of similarities and differences from three aspects, namely territory feature, ways of thinking and national character.Conclusion: summarize for the entire paper.