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Abstract Poetry is the Urspurach of the language of a nation that embodies the latter's fundamental characteristics. This paper examines the differences in linguistic features between English and Chinese poems in three dimensions: prosody, writing system and grammar. The examination yields three major findings: 1) The English poetic language is characterized by a strong focus on temporality, highlighting its connectivity and continuity, while the Chinese poetic language is marked by a strong concentration on spatiality, stressing its discreteness and chunkiness. 2) The spatiotemporal differences between English and Chinese poetic languages constitute the funda¬mental distinctions between the English and Chinese languages: English being pro-temporality and Chinese being pro-spatiality. 3) This temporal-spatial difference in the thinking pattern of the two languages could be deduced from the aforementioned findings: the English-speaking people are more temporality-oriented while the Chinese-speaking people are more spatiality-oriented, which provides further support for the theory of “English pro-temporality and Chinese pro-spati¬ality”.
Key words: poetry; temporality; spatiality; the theory of English pro-temporality and Chinese pro-spatiality
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