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A Contrastive Study of the Generation and Expansion of the GIVE Concept and the GIVE Sentence in English and Chinese

Author: ZhuXia
Tutor: QinYuXiang
School: Hunan Normal University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: the GIVE concept the GIVE sentence generation expansion contrast between English and Chinese
CLC: H314.3
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 23
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Abstract

The GIVE concept is a concept resulting from human conceptualization of the Give event. Linguists from different linguistic schools at home and abroad have conducted a lot of research and contrastive studies on the language phenomena related with Give in English and Chinese, major achievements including studies on ditransitive construction from structural approach, studies on double-object construction from generative approach and studies on ditransitive construction from construction grammar approach. The previous studies mainly focus on the analyses and comparisons of the language phenomena themselves, failing to study how they are generated. The present thesis, with the experiential view of cognitive linguistics as the starting point, has made a contrastive study of the generation and expansion of the GIVE concept and the GIVE sentence in English and Chinese under the guidance of the prototype category theory, the conceptualization theory and the metaphor and metonymy theory."Giving" is one of the most basic ways by which human beings interact with each other and with the world. It is a relation universally existing between things in the objective world and part of humans’ experiential system. The giving event in the objective world, when it is mapped into the conceptual world of human beings through metaphor, results in the generation of the GIVE concept:"The Giver gives the Thing to the Recipient through an Act of Giving." The GIVE concept is a prototype category. Its prototype is the result of the conceptualization of physical giving events, and its non-prototype is the result of the conceptualization of non-physical giving events. The Act of giving is the core of the GIVE concept and determines the nature of its category members. The prototype of the GIVE concept is "The Giver gives the Thing to the Recipient through a physical Act of Giving", and the non-prototype of the GIVE concept is "The Giver gives the Thing to the Recipient through a non-physical Act of Giving". The non-prototype of the GIVE concept is the result of the expansion of the prototype of the GIVE concept. The main cognitive mechanism involved in the expansion is metaphor. The GIVE concept includes four componential elements:the Giver, the Recipient, the Thing and the Act of Giving, which all have prototype effects and expand from prototype to non-prototype by way of metaphor and metonymy when the GIVE concept as a whole is expanded from prototype to non-prototype.Conceptualization and metaphor are ways of thinking shared by all human beings. The experiential basis of the GIVE concepts in English and Chinese is the same. They are both generated from the conceptualization of the giving event in the objective world. The GIVE concepts in English and Chinese are both prototype categories. The prototypes and the non-prototypes of them share the same cognitive features and they involve the same mechanism in their expansion from their prototypes to their non-prototypes. However, in the expansion of the four componential elements of the GIVE concepts in English and Chinese, there exist some differences, which are mainly reflected by the incomplete agreement between the two languages in the scope and content of the metonymical expansion of the four componential elements.The GIVE sentence is generated from the metaphorical mapping of the GIVE concept into language. The GIVE sentence has two basic constructions. The first construction is "Subject+Verb+Indirect Object +Direct Object", which highlights the resultative state of the Recipient receiving the Thing. The second construction is "Subject+Verb+Direct Object+Prep+Indirect Object", which highlights the transferring path of the Thing. The GIVE sentence is also a prototype category, of which the prototype and non-prototype are the linguistic representations of the prototype and non-prototype of the GIVE concept. The prototype and non-prototype of the GIVE sentence are the same in basic construction, but they express different meanings and have different syntactic features. The prototype reflects physical giving and has more varied forms, while the non-prototype reflects non-physical giving and has fewer varied forms.The mapping from concept to language is based on similarity, so the same concept may generate different sentence patterns. The GIVE sentences in English and Chinese have both similarities and differences in their syntactic features. The similarities are reflected by the fact that the basic constructions in the two languages are basically the same and the differences are reflected by the fact that the basic constructions in Chinese have more varied forms than in English.There are also similarities and differences in the generation and expansion of the GIVE concept and the GIVE sentence in English and Chinese. The similarities result from the same experiential basis and the similar ways of cognition, while the differences are attributed to cultural differences and the different ways of cognition resulting from the cultural differences.

A Contrastive Study of the Generation and Expansion of the GIVE Concept and the GIVE Sentence in English and Chinese

Abstract

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