A Cognitive Study Of The Construction "da + T +(de)"

Metaphor is not only a rhetorical device of language,but also a basic cognitive ability of human beings.It is through metaphor that human beings can construct unknown and unfamiliar experience based on known and familiar experience.Since the 1980s,numerous cognitive studies of metaphor have emerged one after another,among which studies of time-space metaphor are not in the minority.Previous studies of time-space metaphor reach the consensus on the whole:human beings understand the concept of time based on the concept of space.For studies of time-space metaphor,scholars at home and abroad pay great attention to such localizers as"before" ,"after" ,"up" and"down" and such spatial verbs as"come" and"go" ,and try to demonstrate that the concept of time is constructed based on the concept of space from different perspectives.There are two main classifications of time-space metaphor:one is time-moving metaphor and ego-moving metaphor;the other is ego-reference-point metaphor and time-reference-point metaphor.It is true that fruitful achievements have been made,but there are only a few scholars turning eyes to the time-space metaphor out of spatial dimensional adjective"da" .What's more,it is a fact that there are quite a few expressions representing the concept of time based on spatial dimensional adjective"da" such as"???(three days ago)" ,"???(most of the night)" and so on.Therefore,this study takes metaphor theory as framework to analyze one common Chinese expression"da+T+(de)" to explore the cognitive basis based on which spatial dimensional adjective"da" can construct the concept of time.Based on the BCC corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University,this study retrieves,samples,denoises,analyzes and classifies"da+T+(de)" linguistic data and defines seven types of sub-constructions named status highlighting,time locating,time lasting,time condensing,subjective attitude,time emphasizing and order indicating sub-constructions based on different core meanings.Next,metaphor theory is used to explore the cognitive basis based on which spatial dimensional concept"da" can construct the concept of time.At the same time,theanalysis of the structure"xiao+T+(de)" is given to provide evidence for the interpretation of the cognitive mechanisms of"da+T+(de)" sub-constructions.In the end,with the help of some English expressions,this study tries to point out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in using the concept of space to construct the concept of time.According to metaphor theory,although all these "da + T +(de)" sub-constructions are from the mapping of spatial dimensional concept "da" to the concept of time,mapping mechanism of each type can be quite different.Due to different experience basis,ways of conceptualization of the concept of space "da" can be different and many metaphors are involved.One kind of metaphor or the interactive cooperation of multiple metaphors can construct a variety of temporal meanings existing in "da + T +(de)" construction.Besides,although the academic community generally believes that representing the concept of time by the concept of space is common in human languages,for example,such concepts of space as "up" ,"down" ,"before" and "after" can be used to represent the concept of time in most languages,it can be seen from the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese linguistic phenomena that the specific representations of time-space metaphor of different cultures can be quite different.As shown in this study,spatial dimensional concept "da" can construct a variety of temporal meanings in Chinese and corresponding "big" can hardly express same meanings in English.It doesn't mean that "big" can not be used to express any temporal meanings in English.To be exact,"da" in Chinese can express more temporal meanings than "big" in English.In consequence,it can be said that both "da" in Chinese and "big" in English can express temporal meanings.However,Chinese is more inclined to use spatial dimensional concept "da" to express the concept of time than English.In addition,different viewpoints on some questions of subjective attitude sub-construction previous scholars pay great attention to are given.Four main ideas are as follows: 1)except for a small number of adjectives,most of the components "da" modifies are nominal.In consequence,"da" is still mainly used to modify nominal components in form.Moreover,in meaning,the semantic orientation of "da" is not the components "da" modifies,but the topos activated.Theword "da" is used to emphasize the importance of the topos activated with the help of"IMPORTANT IS BIG" metaphor.In consequence,"da" still has some characteristics of being an adjective;2)the formation and extinction of a topo is a process of categorization.There are thousands of topos stored in human's cognition.If what someone is experiencing accords with one topo in his cognition,the topo will be strengthened to be more representative than before.On the contrary,if what someone is experiencing is inconsistent with one topo in his cognition and appears all the time,the topo will be weakened and will be replaced by a new topo in the end.If one topo dies out,corresponding "da + T +(de)" may die out.If a new topo takes shape,a corresponding "da + T +(de)" expression will take shape;3)words that can fill the slot of "T" have to meet the following two requirements: one is words can activate topos and the other is these topos activated can not be against the metaphorical extension direction of "da" ;4)subsequent sentences are not indispensable,so it is not necessary to classify them.However,the topos activated can be classified into two types.When the topos activated accord with the current context,the pragmatic functions can be illustrating the fact,reminding,advising and so on.When the topos activated are in conflict with the current context,the pragmatic functions can be rebuking,complaining,mocking and so on.