A Semantic Comparison Of English And Chinese Spatial Adjectives "Deep" And "Shen(?)"

Space consists of physical space,cognitive space and language space.The physical space is composed of the occupying space of the objects and the spatial relation of the objects.The parameters describing the occupying space of an object are spatial size and spatial shape,which are reflected in the language of spatial dimensional words and spatial shape words.Spatial dimensional words include spatial dimensional nouns,spatial dimensional adjectives and spatial dimensional quantifiers.Spatial dimensional adjectives are the common lexical systems in English and Chinese.This thesis compares and analyzes the basic meanings,metonymic meanings and metaphorical meanings of English and Chinese spatial adjectives deep and shenrM)through the componential theory,the prototype theory,the conceptual metonymic and metaphorical theory,and further explores the evolving foundation of deep and sheu(?)from basic meanings towards metonymic meanings and metaphorical meanings.Through the comparison of deep and Shen(?)'s basic meanings,metonymic meanings and metaphorical meanings,this thesis summarizes the following findings.Firstly,both deep and shen(?)can embellish the corporeal nouns and non-corporeal nouns.The senses of deep and shen(?)contain basic meanings and metonymic meanings when describing corporeal nouns,while the senses are metaphorical meanings when modifying non-corporeal nouns.Secondly,the basic meanings of deep and shen(?)are similar,involving the dimensional meanings and the positional meanings.The top-to-bottom sense and the front-to-back sense constitute the dimensional sense.What's more,there are three metonymic meanings of deep and shen(?),that is,the downward meaning from the top-to-down sense,the inward meaning from the front-to-back sense,and the metonymic meaning through containerization.Moreover,the metaphorical meanings of deep and shen(?)are divided into the identical meaning,such as the sense of breath and color;the partly identical meaning,such as the sense of sleep,sound,emotion,knowledge,and time;and the unique meanings in English and in Chinese.Thirdly,when deep and shen(?)modify the nouns in basic meanings,metonymic meanings and metaphorical meanings respectively,the changes occur in the depicted images,referential surface and extending direction.First of all,the images described by deep and shen(?)transfer from the corporeal domain involving liquid,solid and gas,to the non-corporeal domain including color,sound,idea,knowledge.Then the referential surface is shifted from water surface,ground,surface to no referential surface.And the extending direction of the deep and shen(?)are gradually disappearing from specific vertical direction or horizontal direction.Fourthly,this thesis finds out that the evolving foundation of deep and shen(?)from the basic meanings towards metonymic meanings is that the depicted images in basic and metonymic meanings all belong to corporeal things,through the analysis of deep and shen(?)'s referential surface,path and depicted images,and the comparison of depicted images'topological characteristics,spatial location,viewpoints and functional factors.Meanwhile,through the analyses of deep and shen(?)'s sense of breath,color,sleep,sound,emotion,knowledge and time,it is clear that the common features existed in the basic meanings and metaphorical meanings of deep and shen(?)are the evolving foundation of deep and shen(?)from the basic meanings to metaphorical meanings.