Analysis the Semantic Extension of Preposition “in” from the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

English preposition is flexible word with various meaning and preposition"in"is a high-frequent word used widely in English expression. As we know, there are about 70% English sentences are metaphors, and preposition is used frequently as the backbone of metaphorical expression. Therefore, the preposition cognitive interpretation is an effective way to understand the semantic extension of preposition. This article mainly analysis the prototypical meaning and the image schema of preposition "in"and discusses the mapping process from the spatial domain to the other cognitive domain. Through analysis the metaphor semantic extension process, we might get a better understanding of it.

Logic and Sense

In the paper, original formal-logical conception of syntactic and semantic： intensional and extensional senses of expressions of any language L is outlined. Syntax and bi-level intensional and extensional semantics of language L are characterized categorically： in the spirit of some Husserl＇s ideas of pure grammar, Le^niewski-Ajukiewicz＇s theory syntactic/semantic categories and in accordance with Frege＇s ontological canons, Bochefiski＇s famous motto--syntax mirrors ontology and some ideas of Suszko： language should be a linguistic scheme of ontological reality and simultaneously a tool of its cognition. In the logical conception of language L, its expressions should satisfy some general conditions of language adequacy. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic, and semantic compatibility, correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility syntactic and semantic （extensional and intensional） categories of expressions of L. From this postulate, three principles of compositionality follow： one syntactic and two semantic already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L： syntactic, intensional, and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, of course, an idealization, but only expressions with high degrees of precision of their senses, after due justification, may become theorems of science.

A Comparative Study on English Child Metaphor“Gift”and Chinese Child Metaphor“Baobei”

From a perspective of cognitive linguistics,this paper systematically compares and analyzes prototypical child metaphors“gift”and“baobei”in English and Chinese.The analysis,based on corpora and etymologies,shows that English child metaphor“gift”is greatly influenced by its religious factors,while Chinese child metaphor“baobei”is mostly decided by the family value in their culture.Comprehensive explanation on cognitive motivations behind the typical metaphorical expressions provides an effective way for a comparative study of metaphors.