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

摘要

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.