A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Clauses Functioning As An Attribute Of Noun Phrases

A clause functioning as an attribute of a noun phrase is quite a common phenomenon in English and Chinese. Although this structure is often classified as " SV or VO + çš„" in Chinese grammar, we do find its similar syntactic function to the relative clause in English. It seems that this grammatical structure in Chinese conceals its subject or object. Current researches show little attention to this structure and thus this paper is devoted to an overall understanding of this structure. The content of this thesis focuses on the following three aspects:First, when restricting the potential semantic range of noun phrases with its own proposition, the modifying clauses in English and Chinese share the same semantic features. That is to say, the modified noun phrase and the predicate of the clause depend on each other for existence. This semantic restrictiveness is obligatory for the clause and the noun phrase it modifies in both languages. Second, though sharing the same potential conceptual meaning, the combination of a clause and its modified noun phrase shows different syntactic position in surface structure as well as the inner structure of the clause. Based on a full description of syntactic characteristics of this kind of clause, the present thesis points out the differences and similarities existing in surface structure between English and Chinese. Finally, under the guidance of Chomsky's Minimalist Program(1995), the thesis analyses the derivational processes of this structure in both languages. Thus it will demonstrate the restriction of universal grammar upon syntactic structure and interpret the differences of surface structures in English and Chinese.