earticle

영어

This paper is an attempt to make a comparative study on the time expressions based on body-part terms in Korean and Chinese from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The main research results are as follows. Firstly, the common body-part terms in the time expression of both languages are ‘head, hair, eyes, nose, eyebrows, hands, feet, tail’. And ‘mouth’ is only used in Korean time expression. Secondly, ‘eyes’ appear most frequently in the time expression of both languages. This is because the ‘eye’ plays a more central role in human cognition than other body organs. Thirdly, because of the cognitive differences between two counties people, there are many situations that the same body-part terms express different time concept while the same time concept use different body-part terms. Fourthly, the [Time orientation] metaphor and [Body movement for the time required to complete it] metonymy exist in many Korean and Chinese time expressions.