A Contrastive Study Of Negation In Chinese And English

Negation is a ubiquitous category and we have never found a language which lacks the way to express negation, that's why negation is very important to all languages, including Chinese and English. As is known to all, comparison is an important way to study languages, therefore, we have adopted the method of comparison for a contrastive study of the category of negation in Chinese and English. On the basis of the contrastive study, we also discuss the implications that this research may have for the teaching of negative sentences in Teaching of Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL).This paper consists of nine chapters and its main contents are as follows:The first chapter is an introduction, which mainly gives the reasons for the choice of this topic and the significance of the research. In this part we have also presented our opinion about how to define negation and negative sentences, and finally give the scope of the research and research method to be used.The second chapter is a Literature Review, in which we mainly assess the previous studies in relation to our own research. Then I point out the research gap based on the review.The third chapter deals with the theoretical foundations for the study. We have adopted Humbolt's Linguistic Worldview and Marx's dialectical thought on the relationship between particularities and commonalities as the philosophical foundation of our research and then present some principles which we promise to adhere to in the study:basing our study on Chinese and aiming to serve the Chinese research, laying equal stress on both synchronic and diachronic study, pursuing a main goal of theoretical study and subordinate goal for practical application, attaching importance to the basic qualities of both languages and arranging the ideas clearly. Inspired by the "Three-Facet Theory", which originated from the research of Chinese Grammar, we have also suggested that our contrastive study be conducted from three perspectives:syntactically, semantically and pragmatically. At the end of the chapter, we have reviewed some of the theories of functionalism in relation to our research.The next chapter is a contrastive study of the syntactic construction of Chinese and English negation. According to the traditional way of grammatical study, construction may be divided into morphology and syntax. Morphology may be further divided into affixation and word. That's why a study of negative affixation and negative words is first made. Syntactic construction is further divided into ordinary and special negative sentences. By ordinary negative sentence, we mean a negated declarative sentence, following the word order of SVO, without the addition of or reversion of any part of the sentence. By special negative sentence, we mean those negative sentences including some items such as modal verbs, co-ordination and quantifiers. The comparison of both Chinese and English ordinary and special negative sentences shows that Chinese negative sentences are structured mainly on the basis of meaning rather than on grammatical forms, while English negative sentences are structured mainly on the basis of grammatical forms rather than on meaning, but this does not imply that Chinese negative sentences have no form to be based on while English negative sentences have no meaning constraint., that's why they also have some commonalties in syntactic structure.The fifth chapter is a contrastive study of the semantic meanings between Chinese and English negative sentences. The main stresses are on the discussion of scope and focuses of negative sentences. We firstly review the theories about scope and focus given by others and then present our own opinions about scope and focus. In this part we have differentiated the focus of a sentence and a negative focus in a sentence and then analyze the semantic meanings of Chinese and English negative sentences and finally make a contrastive study between their meanings. Study shows that Chinese negative sentences are less ambiguous than their English counterparts because in Chinese sentences, negatives are usually placed before the items to be negated while in English sentences, negatives are mainly placed after an auxiliary. But there are also exceptions to the above rule because Chinese negative sentences may also be ambiguous sometimes, while English ones may be explicit in meaning at times.The sixth chapter is a contrastive study of negative sentences from a pragmatic perspective. We have divided the study into three parts:pragmatic meanings, conversational implicature and coherence. The study shows that context is important for the interpretation of negative sentences both in Chinese and English. But people having different cultural background may sometimes have different understanding about the same negative sentences. A study of the second part shows that negative sentences both in Chinese and English may be used as a tactic to express an implicature. Comparison of the coherence of negatives words show that Chinese and English negatives are similar in reference, ellipsis and substitution.The seventh chapter is a diachronic study of Chinese and English negation. A study shows that Chinese negative sentences have experienced few changes in its sentence structure and main changes have happened to negative words, but English, on the contrary, has experienced many changes in its syntactic structure because in its historical development, word order has become more fixed by virtue of its loss of many morphemes, and the use of "do" as an auxiliary became the turning point in the development of English negative sentences.The eighth chapter is a discussion of its implications for the teaching of negative sentences in TCSL. We have proposed that we may teach negative sentences more efficiently if we can teach negative sentences syntactically, semantically and pragmatically, and we may also benefit from the diachronic study of negative sentences etc.The last part is summary of the previous sub-conclusions and also a discussion of further studies which may be expected.