英文摘要 |
Metaphor is a basic cognitive device for our understanding of the world. As such, physical experience is the prototype of concept cognition. People use their bodies as reference basis and their physical experience as cognitive prototype to shape new concepts with metaphors. Of all the body parts, feet enables the body movement which leads to our understanding of the world, thus, performing a function not shared by other body organs. The body experiences of foot action reflect on the outside world, hence forming various spatial metaphors. The foot-action process includes the starting point, the ending point, and the moving path. Therefore, in the multi-dimensional space, all the experiences of foot-action lay the foundations of spatial metaphors. The implications of foot-action verbs derive from the concept of foot movement in the space. This paper will first identify the semantic features of the foot-action verbs and the features will be served as the prototype of metaphors. Secondly, from different perspectives of moving directions such as upward, downward, forward, backward, inward and outward, the study aims to apply the theories of conceptual metaphor and synthesis of space to analyze the overall effects of foot-action verbs on our mental space, to determine the foot-action metaphors in Chinese, to examine their implied space image schemas and identify the general category of spatial metaphors. |