A corpus based study on animal expressions in Mandarin Chinese and German

This study based on Mandarin Chinese and German Corpora to investigate animal fixed expressions. It aims to, first, apply Goddard’s (1998) approach of semantic molecules to explore semantic interaction. Second, It delves into cultural perspectives with focus on different mentalities and thoughts of the peoples. It is found that there is interconnection and interaction between semantic molecules and these animal names serve as semantic contributors in distinct semantic domains, e.g., cat for ‘woman ’ in German. Furthermore, animal expressions demonstrate the different mentalities as well as the Chinese group-centric and Germans’ individualistic modes of thought