A Sublexical Analysis of the Verb amar / 爱 (ài) in Chinese–Spanish Phraseologisms

Abstract

This article presents a sublexical analysis of the psychological verb amar in Spanish and its Chinese counterpart 愛 (ài), within the  theoretical framework of the Generative Lexicon Theory (GLT). A representative set of phraseological units containing these verbs in both languages is examined, with the aim of identifying the semantic qualia activated in various phraseological contexts. The study reveals that such expressions do not merely convey emotions, but also activate mechanisms of conceptual and cultural transfer. The results are organized typologically according to the implicated quale, the type of complement, and the resulting meaning, thereby allowing for the identification of semantic parallels and divergences between the two languages. This work contributes to the contrastive study of verb-nucleus phraseology and to the cross-linguistic application of GLT.