A Comparative Study On Multiple Pre-modifiers Of Noun Phrases Between English And Chinese

There exist noun phrases with long sequences of pre-modification in both English and Chinese. Multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases are termed two or more than two attributes in front of a noun as Head. They have become a subject for comparative studies, and have aroused academic concern that covers traditional grammar, Transformational Grammar and Functional Grammar. This thesis aims to deeply probe into multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases from a brand new perspective, as the occurrence and the ordering of multiple pre-modifiers are to be explored from a cognitive point of view, and multi-layered analyses, like syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches are to be applied to my comparative study.Multiple pre-modifiers occur to the syntactic context of noun phrases, and they are usually influenced by these factors: functions of pre-modification, types of heads, registers and the ongoing discourses in which multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases are used. Functions of pre-modification are a semantic factor, types of heads a syntactical factor, registers a stylistic factor and the ongoing discourses a pragmatic one. Besides, the cognitive linguistic theory of trajector / landmark is employed to prove that the occurrence of multiple pre-modifiers does not violate the English principle of end weight.The sequential arrangement of multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases is based upon logical meaning relations, like co-ordinate, progressive and embedded relations on the one hand, and upon structural types of pre-modifiers on the other hand. From a cognitive perspective, the iconicity of ordering multiple pre-modifiers means the notion of icon that covers similarities between the structure of the language and that of the world. It is proved by these principles: iconic sequencing, iconic proximity and the iconic quantity of linguistic material.Next, a comparative study is made on multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases between English and Chinese. This part is divided into three linguistic levels: syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels, which is based on the American philosopher W. Morris'classification of semiotic analyses.On syntactic level, a comparison between English multiple pre-modifiers and Chinese ones is made from the synthetic / analytic point of view. English is a synthetic-analytic language because we can find affixation, internal inflection, suppletive system, the uses of conjunctions and the articles in its multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases. Nevertheless, Chinese tends to be an analytic language since word order, auxiliary words, stress and intonation give prominence to its analytic features. In this paper, we are concentrated on how the auxiliary word"çš„"classifies multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases, and how it typifies the analytic characteristics of the Chinese language, since"çš„"plays an important role in marking Chinese pre-modifiers.On semantic level, the language-internal approach is adopted to analyze the meanings of multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases. Firstly, Geoffrey Leech's componential analysis is used to describe the meaning of a noun phrase with multiple pre-modifiers and to interpret the collocation of multiple pre-modifiers with their head nouns. Chinese multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases are different from English ones in that semantically, Chinese multiple pre-modifiers can be sorted into conglutinate type and composite type, whereas English multiple pre-modifiers can not. Then, the sequential arrangements of multiple pre-modifiers are analyzed from the perspective of paradigmatic (associative) relations, and proved by C. E. Shannon's theory. Finally, we come to the conclusion that a pre-modifier with fewer opposites is to be set in front of a pre-modifier with more opposites, and that a pre-modifier with a smaller amount of information is to be placed in front of a pre-modifier with a larger amount of information.On pragmatic level, my study is focused on analyzing the sequential iconicity of multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases. Provided the multiple pre-modifiers of a noun phrase is organized in natural order, namely, their sequential arrangement keeps consistent with the deposited form, then, it is easier to extract the needed information and it takes less cognitive process to arrange word order. If the arrangement of multiple pre-modifiers violates natural order, then, it takes time to reason out the sequence, and the cognitive process may result in errors and misunderstandings.In summary, the author adopts cognitive perspective to make a multilayered, comparative study on multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases between English and Chinese.This thesis aims to probe into multiple pre-modifiers of noun phrases, as the occurrence and the ordering of multiple pre-modifiers are to be explored from a cognitive point of view, and multi-layered analyses, like syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches are to be applied to the comparative study.