A Cognitive Study of Double-object Constructions in English and Chinese

Abstract

Double-object is a kind of syntactic structure which is common in English and Chinese. In the field of linguistics in China, the similarities and differences between English and Chinese double-object sentences have been discussed and debated. Based on the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this paper probes into the metaphor cognition, metonymy cognition and both of them in the double-object constructions of English and Chinese, and points out that the double-object constructions in English and Chinese are similar in the above three aspects. However, there are also differences between English and Chinese double-object constructions, which are manifested in the following three aspects: the scope of double-object constructions, the conceptual patterns and the verbs that can enter the double-object constructions. By analyzing the similarities and differences between English and Chinese double-object constructions, it can be concluded that the syntactic structure of English and Chinese objects reflects the conceptual structures of human beings and the ways of cognition of the world, and even the sentence structure containing the same conceptual content will lead to the difference in meaning because of the different cognitive styles of events.