从空间和隐喻认知角度看介词的多义

ON POLYSEMY OF SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF COGNITION OF SPACE AND COGNITION OF METAPHOR

空间概念是人类认识过程最早形成的概念之一,认知的发展和深化是空间概念向新的领域扩展。隐喻在这一发展过程中起着重要的作用,隐喻的本质就是用其它的措辞、事物、概念来理解和体验另一种事物和概念。这样的概念隐喻导致了语言隐喻。语言表达实际上都经历了一个先出现概念隐喻化,然后在表达形式上通过语言隐喻而扩展词义的过程。本文拟从空间认知和隐喻认知角度分析一些介词由空间意义扩展致其它意义的过程,从而说明一词多义的理据性和系统性,旨在对英语的教学和学习有所启发。

The concept of space , the most direct human body experience, is the earliest and most fundamental in the cognition system. Our range of cognition has been extending and deepeningwhile the spatial concept is mapped onto other domains by way of metaphorization, which plays a key role in human cognitive development. Metaphor is conceptual by nature. Conceptual metaphor, which means experiencing one thing in terms of another, leads to linguistic metaphor. The polysemous senses of a linguistic presentation come into being as a result of conceptual metaphorization and consequent linguistic metaphor. This paper analyzes the process in which a few English prepositions obtain polysemous status by mapping their spatial senses onto other domains and thus reveals the motivations and relatedness of the meanings of these polysemous prepositions. The motivation and relatedness may shed light on English language teaching and learning.