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The review of the literature elaborated above shows that there are notable gaps in the research on linguistic synaesthesia at two levels. One is related to linguistic synaesthesia in human languages in general，and the other is linguistic synaesthesia in Mandarin Chinese in particular.
With respect to general research gaps concerning linguistic synaesthesia in the literature，few implications have been provided to support or disprove the two rival theoretical accounts for mechanisms underlying linguistic synaesthesia. That is because previous studies on linguistic synaesthesia in Indo-European languages （e.g.，English，Italian，and French）and non-Indo-European languages （e.g.，Hebrew and Indonesian）have shown similar transfer patterns for linguistic synaesthesia. Therefore，neither the directionality of linguistic synaesthesia mapping from the more embodied to the less embodied predicted by the embodiment account，nor the cross-linguistic universality of synaesthetic patterns in human languages assumed by the biological association account，can be confuted. On the other hand，both explanatory models can only account for a part of synaesthetic uses when taken into consideration exclusively （Zhao et al.2018b）. Thus，more and finer-grained constructs are needed for both the theoretical models if adopted.
These general research gaps can be addressed by examining more comprehen-sive data covering typologically diverse languages. Mandarin Chinese，as a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family （Chen 1999），is a good candidate，as it is typologically distinct from Indo-European languages and from non-Indo-European languages including Hebrew and Indonesian.
The research gaps for Mandarin synaesthesia in particular lie in both transfer patterns and theoretical explanations. As demonstrated in Section 1.2，previous studies on linguistic synaesthesia in Mandarin Chinese are mostly based on a small sample of data. Thus，the assumptions that Mandarin synaesthesia shows language-specific characteristics for directional tendencies and that Mandarin synaesthesia is grounded in both embodied and neural mechanisms need to be tested through more comprehensive and systematic data.
To summarize，research questions that this book aims to address include：
（1）What tendencies does linguistic synaesthesia in Mandarin Chinese show，when a large-scale sample of synaesthetic data considered?
（2）Does linguistic synaesthesia in Mandarin show the same tendencies as it does in Indo-European languages?In other words，is linguistic synaesthesia subject to cultural differences or not?
（3）What mechanisms underlie Mandarin synaesthesia?
（4）Which theoretical model best explains the tendencies of Mandarin synaesthesia?
（5）What is the nature of linguistic synaesthesia，based on patterns of Mandarin synaesthesia?
（6）What theoretical implications does linguistic synaesthesia provide for CMT and the theory of embodiment?