A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Proverbs With Numbers

Proverbs, carriers of popular culture, show a fundamental presence in both English and Chinese languages. As the phenomenal product while language evolved along with the human history, proverb has functioned in assisting human communication for a relatively long time. No matter in Chinese proverbs or English ones, the application of numbers are both indispensable, with a higher proportion than other elements.The number in proverbs indicates the parts consisting of cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers. Since the unique character of numbers in terms of the language culture, numbers in proverbs deliver the culture of nationality or language in a much better way. This study aims to explore the parallels and differences in English and Chinese from a number of aspects, namely the language itself, the logic of language, and the culture of the language; and based on proverb as the basic material, through methods of deep analysis, description and comparison, to implicate its language form and cultural background by studying its expressive approaches.This study discusses and compares the parallels and differences of numbers in proverbs in both languages through the following aspects.1. The different extents of definition.2. To generalize the study and comparison of English and Chinese.3. To compare the language features of numbers in both English and Chinese proverbs, mainly including the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.4. To study the character of metaphors contained in proverbs which include numbers, in the search of the similarities and differences of their use in English and Chinese.5. According to the fact that numbers in Chinese and English proverbs may share similar but slightly different emotional preferences, this study will start studying and comparing from the three emotional definitions, including the following allusions: commendatory, derogatory and neutral.6. To explain the origin and formation of proverb in Chinese and English, looking for each one's cultural features, in order to discover the differences in religion, history and humanity.