The Contrastive Study Of Yes-no Questions In Russian And Chinese

This dissertation focuses on yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese with contrastive study from multi-dimension, such as syntactic structure, communicative function, illocutionary force and speaker's cognitive state. The purpose is to explain the differences and similarities on yes-no questions between the two languages. Three parts are included in this dissertation:The first part includes literature review on yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese and theoretic background to the current study. In the existing literature, there are a lot of differences and debate on the definition of yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese. So yes-no questions is redefined, namely, yes-no questions is a kind of interrogatives in which speaker expects yes-no answers or non-verbal yes-no responses from hearer. A Minimalist Program of Linguistic Theory (N.Chomsky) and Speech Act Theory are used in this dissertation.Contrastive study of syntax structure of yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese is made in part two. The generative mechanism, component feature and expression models of yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese are analyzed in detail. The differences and similarities are found and the reasons are explained.For every communicative functions of yes-no questions in Russian and Chinese, such as information seeking(including purely information questions, presumptive questions, confirmation-type questions), imperative, opinion expressing and emotion expressing, their semantic and pragmatic features and speaker's cognitive states are discussed in part three.By means of contrastive study on yes-no questions in Chinese and Russian, This dissertation found that there are differences on syntax structure and there are sameness on semantic and pragmatic features and communicative functions. The differences are caused by two elements, namely, language style feature and culture differences. But the sameness exist because of some common elements in the communicative events, including the manner by means of which human knows the world, the process in which human accumulates experiences and the mentality change process which occurs when people communicate.