《英汉谓词修饰语对比研究》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《英汉谓词修饰语对比研究（83页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、 i A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND CHINESE PREDICATE MODIFIERS By Ni Tao Under the supervision of Dr. Yang Ling A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the School of Foreign Studies Anhui University April 2008 i Acknowledgements No usual t
2、hanks are sufficient to acknowledge my debt to the generous and learned professors of the School of Foreign Studies who have given me encouragement and many great precious suggestions. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Yang Ling for her precious suggestions, detailed commen
3、ts and discerning criticism on my thesis. Without her help, this thesis would not have been completed. Her insights into the fields of contrastive linguistics have broadened my knowledge and horizon and enabled me to investigate the language from the perspective of contrast and comparison; her optim
4、istic attitude on life and her determination on and devotion to teaching and research have urged me to proceed along my dreams. Furthermore, I am sincerely grateful to all the teachers in the School of Foreign Studies for their instructions in the past years. They are Prof. Zhu Yue, Prof. Chen Zheng
5、fa, Prof. Zhou Fangzhu, Prof. Zhang Ming, Prof. Zhu Xiaomei, Dr. Hu Jian and Dr. Zhang Hongxia. Their earnest teaching and enlightening are of great help to my study. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, who have undertaken all the housework and shared my joys and
6、frustrations in working on the thesis. ii Abstract Language is a highly structured system of symbols. Sentences are not formed by randomly combining lexical items, but by following a set of rules. The linear sequence is one of the basic rules. In linearly-structured sentences, syntactic elements are
7、 usually placed with certain orderings. So are the predicate modifiers. Moreover, in case of co-occurring predicate modifiers, modifiers within the co-occurring pattern should also be ordered. For this reason, the exploration of the ordering of predicate modifiers arouses much interest in scholars a
8、t home and abroad. An extensive survey of the existing literature suggests that most previous studies concerning predicate modifiers are non-systematic and less persuasive. They have the following characteristics: firstly, differences between English predicate and Chinese Wei-Yu are not fully consid
9、ered in the study of predicate modifiers; secondly, there are no shared standards among classifications of semantic and grammatical categories of predicate modifiers; thirdly, previous studies are mainly based on the tailored or borrowed examples; in addition, the basis of the ordering has seldom be
10、en touched upon from a cognitive point of view. Therefore, this thesis aims to make a description-oriented contrastive study of English and Chinese predicate modifiers with data from 200 bi-directional translation corresponding texts. From the study, it is found that there are both differences and s
11、imilarities between English and Chinese predicate modifiers. Firstly, as far as the collected data are concerned, in English and Chinese, Time, Place and Process are the most common predicate modifiers, while Degree, Reason, Purpose and Result are relatively less common. Secondly, predicate modifier
12、s are associated asymmetrically with positions in English and Chinese. Overall, Initial and End are the optimum positions in English while Initial and Mid-2 are the preferred in Chinese. Thirdly, based on the present data, the ordering of co-occurring predicate modifiers can be described as: Degree
13、Process Space Purpose Time in English, and Time Purpose Process Space Degree in Chinese. Last but not least, both English and Chinese observe iconicity principles in the placement of predicate modifiers, though the degree of salience of some particular principles is different in two languages. iii T
14、his study provides important insights into better understanding of English and Chinese predicate modifiers, thus, the second language learners can consciously avoid the negative transfer in this field. It is also helpful to translation practice and program writing in machine translation. Moreover, t
15、he application of iconicity to the analysis of the ordering of predicate modifiers can not only provide a platform to validate the significance and generality of iconicity, but also create a new perspective for the study of it. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is an introductory p
16、art to state the significance and objectives of the present study. Chapter Two is an overview of related studies on predicate modifiers in English and Chinese as well as contrastive studies of predicate modifiers between the two languages. Chapter Three attempts to establish the common ground for the present contrastive study. It introduces the perspectives adopted by the study, which include the definition, the classification and the position of pre
