英汉空间范畴化对比分析——以in、on和(在)……上、(在)……里为例

在人类所有的概念范畴中,空间范畴是最基本、最重要的范畴之一,它反映了人们对事物间各种空间关系的认知、分类和组织.本文以认知语言学的范畴化理论为基础考察了英语介词in、on与汉语的(在)……上、(在)……里在空间范畴化上的异同.分析结果表明:英、汉语在划分这两个空间范畴的核心成员时趋于一致,而在划分它们的非核心成员.尤其是边缘成员时则有差异.造成这种差异的深层原因是由于英、汉两个民族拥有不同的空间认知系统和习惯,并在观察空间关系时采取了不同的观察视角.

A Comparative Analysis of English and Chinese Spatial Categorization——A Case Study of in, on, (zai)... shang and (zai)... li

Spatial categories are one of the most basic among all the conceptual categories.They represent how people perceive,classify and organize various spatial relations between objects.From the perspective of categorization theory of cognitive linguistics,the paper investigates categorization similarities and dissimilarities between English prepositions in,on and Chinese(zai)...shang,and(zai)...li.The comparative study shows that English and Chinese tend to converge in sorting the core semantic members of these two spatial categories,but diverge in classifying the non-core members,especially the peripheral members.The deeprooted factors contributing to the spatial categorization divergence between English and Chinese include disparities of spatial cognitive systems and conventions across the two languages and different observation perspectives they take in viewing spatial relations.