WHAT DOES HAND EXPRESS IN CHINESE AND SPANISH?

This study focuses on the body-part hand in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish with the majority of the data taken from Chinese Mandarin Online Dictionary and Web edition of Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage. The Spanish data were obtained from Corpus de Referencia del Espanol Actual de la Real Academia Espanola and Lanbridge Diccionario Manual Espanol-Chino. The research questions are: (1) What meanings do the hand expressions in both languages convey? (2) What are the meanings based on? (3) Is there a cognitive model behind them? The answer of the third question is based on that of the first two. We found that (a) +people, +action, and +power are the most frequently occurring semantic molecules for hand expressions, (b) the favorite underlying conceits that generate hand expressions are 'behavior' and 'function', (c) BODY IS FUNCTION proves true, and (d) we propose that BODY IS STATIC is more fundamental based on the observation in hand expressions. Adapted from the source document