Study on Chinese Spatial Metaphors at Lexical Level

Abstract

Study of spatial metaphors is a major theme in cognitive linguistics. This paper tries to make a full survey on Chinese spatial terms that are metaphorically extended to other domains and make a simple study on how they are metaphorically extended, with the aim of supporting and completing the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor. Firstly this paper investigates the research state at present, then it briefly discusses the expressing form of spatial concepts in modern Chinese language, this defines the scope where our study can find the metaphorical extension of spatial concepts at linguistic level. At the same time, we still argue that some of them emerge directly from our spatial experience and some are metaphorically derived. There still exist the spatial expressions that are combined by body-part nouns plus spatial terms, which are also metaphorically used in Chinese expressions. Through these analyses, we can find some implication to the development of Chinese lexis.