A Cognitive Study Of Representations Of The Same Compound Concepts In English And Chinese WIND Frames

Most of the previous studies on WIND are carried out from the perspectives of semantic structure and metaphor.They do not involve the WIND compound concepts and the representation of compound concepts.This thesis has made a cognitive study on formation,classification,and representations of the same compound concepts in English and Chinese WIND frames under the guidance of linguistic unit concept frame theory and conceptual metonymy theory.The thesis has first analyzed,summarized and compared the same compound concepts existing in the English and Chinese WIND frames,and has found that reasons for the formation of the same compound concept are the similar physical experience and cognitive characteristics people have.The way of formation also has the same regularity,that is,it is mostly based on the properties of the wind itself,such as the fluidity,directionality and destructiveness,which radiate to other fields besides natural phenomena,thus expanding the WIND frames.The same compound concepts in English and Chinese WIND frames can be divided into two categories: thing compound concepts and event compound concepts.The former are more than the latter.Among them,the thing compound concepts are concrete thing concepts,and there are no same abstract thing concepts.The same concrete thing compound concepts can be divided into concepts with WIND as the central element and concepts with WIND as the determinant element;the same event compound concepts can be divided into action event compound concepts and state event compound concepts.Then the thesis has compared the representations of the same compound concepts in English and Chinese WIND frames,and discovered that there are mainly two patterns: direct statements and metonymic expressions,and the latter are more than the former.The study further found that the two languages have more similarities than differences in the representations of the thing compound concepts.When presenting the compound concept with WIND as the central element,both languages use wind to represent the central element,while the determinant element is represented metonymically.When representing the compound concepts with WIND as the determinant element,the representations of the determinant element are metonymic expressions related to WIND.The differences are people highlight and hide different elements in metonymy,and English has more forms of representation than Chinese.In the representations of event compound concepts,the differences are greater than similarities.Chinese is more specific and detailed in the representation of the event compound concepts,and the use of auxiliary words and verbs is more distinctive,while English frequently uses prepositions.These differences are mainly caused by different language types,economy principle,unique historical culture and geographical environment and so on.The research has expanded the application of linguistic unit concept frame theory and conceptual metonymy theory.The study of formation,classification,and representations of the same compound concept in English and Chinese WIND frames has deepened learners’ understanding of two different languages and cultures.