Topological Spatial Relations, Containment and Support: A Contrastive Study of Mandarin and English.
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2017-05
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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This dissertation investigates two topological spatial relations, containment and support, which are assumed to exist in the minds of all speakers because of their basis in a shared physical world. However, cross-linguistic studies on the use of the spatialcharacterizing elements on/in and the corresponding words shàng/lǐ in Mandarin show that they do not fully overlap. The dissertation focuses on two aspects: first how speakers of English and Mandarin encode the two spatial relations, and second whether the similarities and differences of the two spatial terms affect the acquisition of the L2 learners. To address the question how speakers of English and Mandarin encode the two spatial relations, the study adopted an embodied cognitive approach, the proto-scene model that is under the Framework of Polysemy Network by Tyler and Evans (2001, 2003). Via this model, the dissertation demonstrated how the encodings of the two spatial terms between the two languages overlap and diverge. Furthermore, in order to confirm whether cross-linguistic difference plays a role in the acquisition of L2 learners and if it is, to what extent does it affect their learning, the study conducted two experiments to examine the question. The results of the two studies suggested that cross-linguistic difference is a factor in the acquisition of the two spatial terms, which was resulting from the conceptual transfer (Jarvis and Palvenko, 2008; Odlin 2005). Furthermore, the results also suggested that the conceptual differences between the two spatial terms are difficult to acquire even for the learners at high proficiency level.
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Mandarin dialects--Semantics, Mandarin dialects--Spoken Mandarin, English language--Semantics, English language--Spoken English
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