英汉“足衣”类词汇国俗语义共性及其生成的体认机制

On Footwear-related Expressions in English and Chinese: Their Shared National Semantics and Embodied-Cognitive Mechanism

英汉"足衣"类词汇蕴含丰富的国俗语义,是一种重要的语言现象。当前学界对其仅有零星的研究,故存在不系统、欠深入、缺乏理论解释等不足。本文系统地考查了这一跨语言现象,发现该类词汇国俗语义存在五大共性,两大差异,并用体认语言学观点对其生成机制作出全面阐释:足衣词汇国俗语义的形成是"现实体验、概念认知、言语操作、文化准入"四个环节互动融合的结果,英汉民族相近的行为习性和类似的认知方式决定这类词汇的国俗语义共性大于差异。

Among English and Chinese footwear-related expressions, there exist intriguing semantic phenomena characterized by cultural connotation. This fact however has so far drawn inadequate attention from scholars. Moreover, the previous studies in this respect are unsystematic with little theoretic interpretation. Thus this paper conducts a thorough investigation into national semantics embedded in footwear-related expressions between the two languages. The findings include two distinctions and five similarities. Then an account is presented for the generative motivation of the above-mentioned national semantics from an Embodied-Cognitive Linguistic perspective. The national semantics does not come into being until it goes all through the following four steps: "empirical activity, conceptual processing, utterance circulation, and cultural admission." The similar social customs and cognitive manners between English and Chinese people surely beget the similar national semantics in footwear-related expressions.