Semantic Transfer of Hand Action Verbs of "lifting" in Arabic and Chinese ( A Comparative Study) 汉阿“提类”手部动词语义转移对比研究

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Abstract

Hand Action verbs are a kind of verbs that human beings use to express their actions and daily activities. A growing body of research has suggested that there is an increasing interest in studying the semantic meaning of action verbs, especially the verbs related to parts of the human body. However, there has been little research on the phenomenon of “meaning transfer” of action verbs, and even less research on cross-language comparisons. In light of this view, this research provides a comparative study to investigate the semantic transfer phenomena of “lifting” action verbs between Chinese and Arabic. It aims to identify the similarities and differences between the semantic characteristics and semantic transfer phenomena of “lifting” action verbs in Chinese and Arabic. To achieve this, the researcher has used the descriptive statistical and comparative approaches. The examination reveals that there are four “lifting” action verbs in Chinese and two equivalents in Arabic; they are often related to hand movements. The results have shown that in various contexts, the meaning of “lifting” verbs transfer, and they become related to other parts of the human body such as mouth. In addition, they also give different connotative meanings. The results have also revealed that the semantic transfer of the “lifting” meaning in Chinese occurs in just one way, while in Arabic it occurs in four ways. The meanings of the verbs are somewhat identical in the two languages.
 

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Journal of the Faculty of Arts
Volume 85, Issue 6 - Serial Number 6
July 2025 Issue: Social Sciences and Languages
July 2025
Pages 1-30

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