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A comparative study on the structure of spatial metaphors in Korean and Chinese focused on lexeme of ‘mind’

  • Korean Semantics
  • 2012, 37(), pp.293-310
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Semantics
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Cui, Feng-hu 1

1경북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study focused on the structure of spatial metaphors through the lexeme ‘mind’ compared to Korean and Chinese. According to Cognitive Linguistics, we understand the abstract ‘mind’ through concrete ‘space’. In this respect, this study investigates the mind's dimentionality both Korean and Chinese. Both languages equally classify one, two and three dimentions. However, there are three differences in the way of expression. First, each language has different meaning for the term ‘mind’. The mind in Korean are defined as abstract entities, but the mind in Chinese are defined as concrete entity ‘heart’ and abstract entities. Second, Korean expresses the mind using the relation with predication and postposition, but Chinese expresses the mind using classifiers or ‘xīn+A’. Third, Chinese expresses the mind in one and two dimensions more diversely than Korean by using the classifiers ‘bàn’, ‘mén’, ‘miàn’. Chinese also expresses the mind directly using ‘rú’ to reflect a figurative expression. Thus, there are two reasons as mentioned. First, people express the mind through conceptualized domain. In other words, people perceive the same concept to the different point. Second, people have different mechanisms under language and culture. Each language has unique characteristics to express the mind in spite of both languages expressing the same dimentionality. Both languages appear with various metaphorical aspects.

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