Comparative Study On Smell Adjectives In English And Chinese

Smell-sense is one of the basic human feeling, and every languages have rich smell-sense adjective (someone also known as "the smell of the word"). Smell-sense adjectives refer to the odor which olfactory organ smells and smell feelings. This article only selecting groups of typical English and Chinese smell-sense adjectives--"fRagrant"/"xiang"、"fishy"/"xing"、"smelly"/"chou"、"sour"/"sou"were analyzed.In this paper, by means of the《Han Code》、《Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary》 (the seventh edition)and《Modern Chinese Dictionary (sixth edition),the paper collated their dictionary listing senses and find the common semantic meaning by using of Lexical semantics, Contrastive linguistics and Cognitive linguistics,then try to explain it.On the basis of comprehensive statistics COCA, CCL-related corpus and by using of the theory of Cognitive semantics,this paper try to analyzes the process of metaphor cognition of English-Chinese smell-sense adjectives,and summarized the common and difference of their cognitive metaphorical meaning.Through a semantic contrastive study on four groups of basic smell adjectives-"fragrant"/"xiang"、"fishy "/"xing"、"smelly"/"chou"、"sour"/"sou"between English and Chinese, it draws the conclusion that,on the one hand,based on the physiological mechanism,the same perception organs and some similar experiences shared by human beings,each correspondent group of words between English and Chinese, such as"fragrant"/"xiang"、"fishy "/"xing"、"smelly"/"chou"、 "sour"/"sou"has the same basic meanings.In addition to "fragrant"、 "smelly"and"sour "in English, Smell-sense more use of phrases such as "fishy smell"with the phrase to indicate "xing",it means the smell of fish and "shan" also used the phrase "odor of sheep or goats"to annotate, meaning", it means the flavor of goat.On the other hand,due to different nations,different culture background and different living style,which decides the different thinking between Chinese and English, and sometimes may have different perception on the same thing,then it may lead to completely different meanings.On this basis, the paper will further explore the process and metaphor characteries in meaning derivation of English and Chinese the meaning of in English and Chinese smell adjectives.It finally comes to two major conclusions:(1) in Chinese and English,two smell adjectives with the same antonymous relations, while Chinese smell adjectives with more wider extended meaning.(2)In addition to describing physical phenomena, smell adjectives can also be extended to the psychological phenomena,by mapping the abstract domain to concrete domain. From the initial physiological significance derived from psychological and emotional sense, it is the thinking way of human beings,from the concrete to the abstract.From the point of Category correspondence,semantic component analysis and the use of metaphor, this paper contrast the smell adjectives both in Chinese and English. on the one hand,it can help learners better understand the smell adjective meaning and master its usage, then promotion the English and Chinese translation.on the other hand,through cross-language comparison,it can enrich the research of smell adjectives, deepen their understanding of Chinese and English as well as the ways of thinking between Chinese and Western。...