Metaphor and thought

The paper focuses on the issues within the paradigm of Contemporary MetaphorTheory, concerning significant differences in the ways time is conceptualized inChinese and English. Although it is still true that time is understood through spacevia metaphor, the paper provides evidence that time and space in Chinese presenta blended form, rather than what is widely assumed to be conceptualizationof one dimension in terms of another one. For instance, the Chinese word forthe universe, conventionally referred to by the form entailing both space andtime in its Chinese morphology, is now blended into one. Furthermore, thepaper will argue that time, as a culturally sensitive entity, is more distinctlyconceptualized as water in Chinese.