Expression Of The Concept Of Spatial Orientation Of Modern Chinese And The Localizer

This paper makes a preliminary study on locative nouns and the expression of direction. There are two parts in this paper. At first, the writer commence with the view of that Chinese has the unique expression of direction. With the way of cognitive linguistics, this paper focuses on the non-compound locative nouns, defines them and classifies them. To base on it, the writer states the expression of the conception of direction and the factors that could influence it. The writer concludes that there are 15 non-compound locative nouns and can be classified into 4 kinds that are "absolute locative nouns", "double- reference locative nouns", "comparative locative nouns" and "positional locative nouns" according to their frames of reference. And this classification reflects their grammar and semantic characteristic.There are many factors, which can influence the expression of concept of space and location, e.g., the grammatical factors, the cognitive factors, even the number of the syllables and rhythm. This paper mainly comes down to the factors as aim, frames of reference, locative nouns, and observer and so on.The second part makes a concrete analysis of the non-compound locative nouns. The writer commence with the basic structure about conception which express a kind of special location, that is "X·non-compound locative nouns" structure. "X" and "non-compound locative nouns" inter-restrict. Different "X"s even the same "X" containing different features, need different non-compound locative nouns or the different meaning items of the same non-compound locative nouns to match with them. The writer takes the 15 non-compound locative nouns as this paper's main line and analyses the relations of "X" and "non-compound locative nouns" in detail. Moreover, the writer tries to explain all these kinds of expressions meaningfully, but the writer doesn't sort these meaning items orderly because of the limitation of length.This paper not only analyses the meaning and usage of every locative nouns but also distinguish this kind of locative nouns, which share the same or similar meaning, for example, this paper analyses the differences and similarity of "xia" and "li", the differences and similarity of "shang" and "zhong" , the semantic differences and similarity of "shang" and "xia" when they meet verbs.