A Study On The Differences Between English And Chinese Spatial Cognition Based On Usage Of Spatial Terms

Spatial cognition is the basis of human beings' cognition.Spatial thinking helps us to understand other domains.The different spatial terms in English and Chinese are the basic tool to express spatial relations.The theoretical framework of the thesis bases on Levinson's spatial frames of reference.Taking the website of Center for Chinese Linguistics of Peking University(CCL)and the website of British National Corpus(BNC)as the data sources,this thesis attempts to analyze the different usage of English and Chinese spatial terms and the predominant frame of reference in each language,in order to find out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese cognition and the causes behind.The results will provide more sufficient explanations for the study of spatial cognition.This thesis studies the usage of two sets of spatial terms used to express the horizontal relation in spoken parts of CCL and BNC corpora.The first set includes“north”,“south”,“east” and “west”;the second set includes “left”,“right”,“front”,“before”,“ahead”,“back”,“after”,“behind”.According to Levinson's frames of reference,these spatial terms can be divided into three categories,namely spatial terms used in intrinsic frame of reference,spatial terms used in relative frame of reference and spatial terms used in absolute frame of reference.Some conclusions can be drawn based on contrastive study between the choice of English and Chinese predominant frame of reference and the usage of English and Chinese spatial terms.First,the three kinds of frames of reference have been adopted in both English and Chinese expressions.Second,In English spoken language relative frame of reference is the predominant frame of reference,while Chinese prefers absolute frame of reference.Third,the different choices of predominant frame of reference in English and Chinese can reflect the different spatial cognition of the users in two languages,which can be explained from the perspectives of geography,history culture and architecture.Fourth,there are some similarities and differences of the usage of English and Chinese spatial terms in each frame of reference.