Prosodic Constraints On Morphology And Syntax In Chinese And English

Prosodic elements include such factors as the number of syllable, stress (word stress and sentence stress), rhythm, pause, etc. The interrelations between prosody and morphology, syntax have been touched upon by scholars both at home and abroad, but profound research had not been carried out systematically until the found of Optimality Theory by phonologist Alan Prince and cognitive scientist Paul Smolensky in 1990s. The central idea of Optimality Theory is that language is the domain of conflicting requirements. The optimal output form is the one that minimally violates high-ranked constraints, possibly at the expense of violations of lower-ranked constraints. With the establishment of this theory, there appear prosodic morphology (McCarthy & Prince, 1993) and Chinese prosodic syntax (Feng Shengli, 1992), which mainly study how prosodic factors constrain word formation and sentence organization. A lot of useful fruits have been produced. However, few researches have been carried on correlatively in Chinese and English. Thus this paper aims at discovering the different prosodic constraints on morphology and syntax in Chinese and English, and discussing its effect on translation in both languages.On the basis of the prosodic morphology, this paper points out that the number of syllables is one of the key elements that constrain word formation of Chinese and disyllabicity is the inner requirement of Chinese prosodic morphology. Prosodic constraints on English morphology are realized through the compositions of syllables and the assignment of stress in words. As to prosodic syntax, Nuclear Stress Rule (Liberman, 1977) is considered to constrain the sentence organization in both languages. It partly accords with the principle of End-Weight, widely accepted in Chinese and English (Chao Y. R. 1969; Tang Tingchi, 1985; Quirk, 1985; etc). Apart from NSR, a Chinese sentence must obey the requirement that only one stressed form is permitted to follow the verb in the stress domain. This paper discusses the application of the study in translation in its final part. Such issues are dealt with as how to create idiomatical words, to make expressions vividly in target language, etc.