Cross-linguistic Comparisons of the MARKET Metaphors

Abstract

This paper argues that pragmatic considerations are involved in the \r\nselection of Malay passive types. The kena passive, which is the third Malay \r\npassive, occurs in limited frequency in specific contexts. These limited \r\noccurrences of the kena passive raise questions whether there are pragmatic \r\nspecifications of this passive type which constrain its use. \r\nAlthough the kena passive is recognized as a type of\r\nTwo research questions are examined in this work regarding the uses of ‘market’ \r\nin Mandarin, Malay and English. The first question asks whether the \r\nuse of ‘market’ in these three languages is similar or different. The second \r\nquestion asks whether the collocates of the ‘market’ are similar or different \r\nacross these languages when used in different grammatical relations. \r\nImplications of the similarities and differences will be discussed. In order \r\nto answer these two questions, ‘market’ metaphors used by different communities \r\nare laid out based on the frequency counts of its source domains \r\nand the collocates according to different grammatical roles (subject, object, \r\nmodifier, etc.) of ‘market.’The results show that certain source domains have \r\npreferences for different grammatical roles for ‘market.’ In addition to this \r\nfinding, the choice of source domains by different speech communities may \r\nalso reflect their perspectives regarding their country’s economy. Therefore, \r\nthrough using quantitative data, this paper is able to infer the perspectives \r\nof these speech communities when referring to ‘market’ in their languages. \r\nThis can be done not only through analyzing the semantic meanings of the \r\nmetaphors, but also through their interface with grammatical relations.