Translation And Collocation Change Of Delexical Verbs In Modern Chinese ——A Study Based On Diachronic Composite Corpora

Translation,as a specific type of language contact,can exert a systematic and continuous impact on the original text of the target language.Collocational replication has become a key topic in the study of the relationship between translation and language change.Most previous studies on translation and language change from the collocational perspective has been based on Indo-European languages.Although Wang（2002）has already perceived the potential impact of translation on the collocational patterns of original Chinese,the systematic analysis of the topic has never been touched upon.Delexical verbs are used to indicate classification and generality in Chinese language.The high frequency of such words in modern Chinese has made some scholars in China（Hu 1993;Xiang 1993;Yu 2002;Diao 2004）show interests in the relationship between translation and the change of these words.Based on theories of language contact,corpus linguistics and corpus-based translation studies,this dissertation uses a Diachronic Composite Corpora to explore what contributions translation has made in the change of delexical verb collocations in modern Chinese with a case study of the most representative delexical verbs,such as Jinxing,Congshi and Zuo from multiple perpectives,and analyzes the mechanisms and motivations of translation in its influence on the change of delexical verb collocations.The results of the dissertation demonstrate that:（1）English,the source language,has a shining-through effect on the collocations of delexical verbs in translated Chinese,including the equivalence and non-equivalence of the source language,an equivalence with a syntactic shift,and an equivalence with a semantic shift.（2）The collocations of delexical verbs in original Chinese copy and absorb the corresponding structures in translated Chinese to varying degrees,which is restricted by different grammatical and semantic features and the degree of delexicalization of such words.Jinxing+VN is the collocation influenced by translated Chinese to the largest extent.Translated Chinese has a significant influence on the collocational patterns of delexical verbs in original Chinese,which is also restricted by the self-improvement and development of delexical verbs in Chinese.（3）As a linguistic feature of traditional Chinese,the typical collocational pattern of delexical verbs is also promoted by translation,spreading their usages into modern Chinese.（4）The collocations of delexical verbs induced by translation are restricted by both internal and external factors of language.The internal factors include the source language shining-through effect,pragmatic factors,stylistic factors,the priority of translated text and the slow adaptation of original texts,form-function equivalence relations,the economic principles and semantic analogy.The external factors include:translation norms,the degree of standardization of the target language,the intensity of language contact,the prestige of source language,and the achievement of social needs.The collocational change of delexical verbs induced by translation can be assigned to the mechanism of the selective copying of language,including combinational copying and semantic copying,along with many factors that play different roles in different historical periods,which altogether restrict the spread of the typical collocational pattern of delexical verbs of translated Chinese into original Chinese.