ABSTRACT This is a linguistic study of two primary metaphors with the same target concept, “DIFFICULTY IS WEIGHT” and “DIFFICULTY IS SOLIDITY,” in English and Chinese. The study employs both lexical and corpus-based approaches in order to gain insights into their manifestation in the two languages. In an attempt to show how the two primary metaphors manifest themselves at the linguistic level, the study lays out the linguistic patterns that reflect the underlying conceptual associations across the metaphorical domains, and analyzes the differences as well as similarities between English and Chinese. It is argued that primary metaphors may manifest themselves at different levels of specificity within and across different languages. The findings support the views that conceptual associations of primary metaphors may or may not lead to productive linguistic patterns in a language, and that speakers’ linguistic experience may play an important role in shaping their metaphorical conceptualizations, in conjunction and interaction with their bodily and cultural experience. The study, therefore, sheds light on the mutuality between language and thought.

中文翻译：

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跨语言的主要隐喻：作为重量和坚固性的难度

摘要 这是对具有相同目标概念的两个主要隐喻的语言学研究，即“困难是重量”和“困难是坚固”，用英文和中文表示。该研究采用词汇和基于语料库的方法，以便深入了解它们在两种语言中的表现形式。为了展示这两个主要隐喻如何在语言层面上表现出来，本研究列出了反映隐喻领域内潜在概念关联的语言模式，并分析了英汉之间的差异和相似之处。有人认为，主要隐喻可能在不同语言内部和跨语言的不同层次上表现出来。研究结果支持以下观点，即主要隐喻的概念关联可能会或可能不会导致语言中的生产性语言模式，并且说话者的语言经验可能在塑造他们的隐喻概念方面发挥重要作用，与他们的身体和文化相结合并与之互动。经验。因此，这项研究揭示了语言和思想之间的相互关系。