《英汉词汇对比分析》

A comment on a Comparative Study of the Meanings of English- Chinese Words 凡海豹 Abstract: English words and Chinese words are rarely the same in lexical meaning. While they are similar in conceptual meaning, they may differ in associative meanings. According to the thesis by Hu Aiguo and Chen Yiming, there are four perspectives studying the lexical meaning of the meanings of English-Chinese words. Culture and language are intertwined and shape each other. It is impossible to separate the two. The words with the same conceptual meaning may be associated with different things and emotions because of the differences in history, geography, religion and values and so forth. We all agree that language helps in communicating with people from different backgrounds. However,we may be less aware that culture literacy is necessary to understand the language being used. If we select language without being aware the associative meanings of the words, we may at best not communicate well and at worst send the wrong message. For example, some words may have opposite meanings in two different culture, "individualism" "ambition" are derogatory terms but in Chinese they are commendatory terms. Conceptual meaning, which makes up the central meaning, refers to logical, cognitive or denotative content. It is definite and comparatively stable. Associative meaning consists of six meanings, namely connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflective meaning, collocative meaning and thematic meaning. Which varies from culture to culture. According to the thesis, I prefer to classify the writers' classification into three parts. Words with the same conceptual meaning, but different or opposite associative meaning. Words with the same conceptual meaning, and the partially same associative meaning. Unique words in their own culture, i.e. lexical gap. Firstly, the words with the same conceptual meaning may be associated with different cultural connotations or cultural meaning. For example, people from different cultural backgrounds would assign a totally different set of meaning to each color. To the Chinese red represents a color of festivities and splendor, but danger, hot, love and sex to Americans. Green means hope, life and vitality in Chinese, but envy, greed and money in English. Some animals and plants and numbers are also have different connotations, for instance, there are many idioms about dog in English which are commendatory which are inverse in Chinese, like 狐群狗党、狗胆包天. Peacock is the representative of good luck and fortune in Chinese, represents the people who are arrogant. And west wind is hope to the English but dreary and downfallen to the Chinese. To Chinese, three means many or frequently, but to the English, three always signifies disorder or truth, like "three handkerchief", three-dimension. Eight is a lucky number to Chinese which stands for good luke to make much money or become rich. Secondly, there are also some words with the same conceptual meaning, and the partially same associative meaning and may be richer associative meaning in one language and than in another. So we can see some similarities between different culture. Black in both culture are associated to something evil or bad,like a black deed, a black villain and 黑帮， 黑哨 and so forth. What's more, black means depressive or dull in English. Some phrases with numbers also convey the similar meaning, like at sixes and sevens and 七上八下, nine times of ten and 十有八九. Thirdly , because of the difference of history, geography, customers,religion and values, there is lexical gap between different languages. For instance, in Chinese we have many kinship terms, some of which seem to have no equivalents in English. The words uncle and aunt are used to indicate all of father's or mother's brothers and sisters. This kind of difference can pose great problems to intercultural understanding. And there are many metaphors about fish in English, but few in Chinese, for they have different life styles and civilization. For the different religion, there are many proverbs from the Bible in English, while in Chinese, we only have many terms with 天（heaven）. At last, I find that there some word which have the similar conceptual meaning and similar associative meaning, but there is still some differences, I called it conceptual difference. It seems that peasant or farmer means 农民, but in English peasant is the people with rough manners, and farmer refers to the people who operates a farm. And 家 is a social unit based on marriage and ties of blood, so it's bigger than the word family in English. There are more words like this, foreigner, officer, official, individualism and so forth. So in our daily learning, we have to be aware of this kind of differences. Though some phrases may have the same sentence structure, quite differently in meaning. We have to do more reading and analyse to grasp the lexical differences between Chinese and English.