A Cognitive Research Of English-Chinese Spatial Expressions

Spatial expressions refer to words which express the direction and a name of relative position. Spatial expressions describe one kind of relationships which exist in the object world and human society. Linguists mainly use the structural approach and spatial metaphor to study spatial expressions. They don’t. analyze the process of creating this spatial phenomena in the mind and the reasons of it. This paper contrasts English-Chinese spatial expressions:in, out and li, zhong, nei, wai. This paper is to contrast the connotations of spatial expressions in the dictionary and the cognitive spatial meanings in the concrete context. Finally, the author finds out the corresponding and non-corresponding relations between them, and concludes the cognitive and non-cognitive reasons of forming these relations. The main contents are the cognitive analysis of English-Chinese spatial expressions in cognitive theories.Through the cognitive analysis of spatial expressions, the author finds out the mental image of spatial expressions and the connector between the space and other cognitive domains in the mind. This paper mainly uses three cognitive theories:image schema, mental space and conceptual blending. The author uses image schema to express the spatial cognitive meanings from Figure 1 to Figure 35 in chapter 3. The place-person change is happened in the mental space. The conceptual blending analyzes the mapping from space to time.This paper contrasts English-Chinese spatial expressions from two aspects: connotation and cognitive meanings. In general statement, In and li, zhong, nei, wai can express the meanings of "space", "time", "state" and "person". However, in can map into "part-whole", "method". Zhong can map into "country". Nei can map into "kinship", "internal organs". Wai maps into "country", "kinship". Out and wai can express the meanings of "space". What’s more, out can map into "absence", "away", "ratio" and "source". Wai can map into "country" and "kinship". Then this paper contrasts the cognitive meanings of English-Chinese spatial expressions. There are five aspects of the correspondence between in and li, zhong, nei:enclosure expression, body expression, time expressions, person expression and state expression. The correspondence between out and wai is the expression of exterior space. However, there are non-corresponding meanings in the corresponding aspects. The non-corresponding aspects are from space, time, state, part-whole, method, object, purpose, degree, modesty, source, approximate distance, country, and kinship.From the corresponding meanings, the author recognizes that English and Chinese people contain the common spatial perception, experience and image schema in the mind. From the non-corresponding meanings, the author recognizes that the non-correspondence is from the social history change, literal types, geographical and cultural factors. What’s more, English and Chinese people own different thought patterns. English people are interested in individuality, rational, analysis and whole. However, Chinese people focus on collectiveness, intuition, representation and part. The spatial expressions are effected by historical change, literal types, geographical and cultural factors.