汉英人体词构成的言辞行为转喻模式对比研究——以双语版《红楼梦》中作为动作对象的“嘴(口)”和Mouth为例

Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Speech Activity Metonymies with Actions Upon Mouth:Based on the Bilingual Corpus of The Story of the Stone

跨语际转喻对比研究(Hilpert 2007)表明,由人体词形成的复杂转喻具有语言和文化特殊性。汉英之间是否也如此?基于《红楼梦》双语语料,本文考察了人体词"嘴(口)"和Mouth作为动作对象构成言辞行为转喻时不同的意义拓展模式。我们发现,汉英两种文本的这种转喻差异巨大。汉语转喻频率远高于英语,转喻种类远比英语丰富。两种文本在最频繁的前三种转喻、转喻的概念结构、语法形态、及物性以及评价倾向诸方面都不同。两种文本转喻对应的情形很少,绝大多数情况下,汉语使用了转喻,而英语使用了非转喻表达。这与西方长于分析性思维,中国偏好综合性思维有关。

Hilpert （2007） observed that chained metonymies with body part terms are linguistically and culturally specific. Is this the case with the metonymies of Chinese and English？ Based on the bilingual corpus of The Story of the Stones, the present study is an attempt of contrastive analysis of Chinese and English in terms of speech activity metonymy with actions upon mouth. It is found that, there is an obvious difference between the two versions. Chinese has much more metonymies than English in terms of both frequency and types, and the distinctions also lie in the light of top 3 metonymies, conceptual and grammatical structures, transitivity and evaluation as well. It is rare for the two versions to be equivalent in metonymy, and in most cases, metonymies occur in Chinese while non-metonymies do in English. This is closely related to the distinct thinking modes between the west and east, the former tends to think analytically while the latter holistically.