A Study On The Cultural Connotation Of The Person In The Word "Ma"

Zoomorphism is widely used in all of the languages, it means that the literal sense of some words reference the animals while the metaphor meaning can denote the person. Horse has an important and especial position in Chinese culture. Chinese people have deep love for horse. There are lots of person-denoting nouns contained the character "马" in Chinese language.First of all, this paper studied the origin of these person-denoting nouns contained the character "马".We choose 42 words from the ancient Chinese and modern Chinese which have this feature.Secondly, on the one hand, this paper analyzed the horse-metaphor from its mechanism to its semantic prominence. On the other hand, we researched the cultural sources of these person-denoting nouns contained the character "马"Finally, as the person-denoting nouns contained the character "马" have some folk custom meanings, second language learners are easily going to make misunderstandings on learning those words. Therefore, we set specific instructional objectives and teaching methods for it.