A Contrastive Study Of Negation Between English And Chinese

Negation is one of the most common linguistic phenomena in all languages in the world. But languages differ in the way of realizing negation. This thesis makes a contrastive study of negation in English and Chinese on different levels. The contrastive study is conducted on the basis of Contrastive Linguistics, Lexicology, Syntactics and Pragmatics with the purpose of finding out similarities and differences of negation in English and Chinese. Horizontally, English and Chinese negations in this paper are classified into explicit negation and implicit negation in light of the relations between form and meaning. And vertically, the author conducts the research on three different levels of language, mainly the lexical level, the syntactic level and the pragmatic level.This dissertation makes a contrastive study of negation in English and Chinese in terms of form and pragmatic situations. Complexity and diversity in form are the main features of English. There are more negative morphemes, words and structures in English than in Chinese. Whereas, there are no specialized corresponding negative morphemes in Chinese whose negative words and structures are comparatively simple.In the research work, Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP), Leech's Politeness Principle (PP) and Gu Yueguo's Chinese Politeness Theory (CPT) are used to explain speakers'verbal behaviors. Both the English-speaking people and the Chinese-speaking people deliberately violate the maxims of CP and observe Leech's PP in consideration of politeness in some cases. As far as the PP is concerned, the English-speaking people mainly observe the Quality Maxim of the CP and the Approbation Maxim and the Agreement Maxim of the PP, while the Chinese people mainly observe the Modesty Maxim of the PP and the Self-denigration Maxim of Gu Yueguo's CPT other than the CP. In addition, this paper further explores cultural influences upon the pragmatic uses of negation in English and Chinese. The different value systems and thought patterns exert influences on the pragmatic uses of negation in the two different languages.Through the contrastive study of negation in English and Chinese from a pragmatic respective, we can find out that pragmatic failure in applying negation in English and Chinese lead to cross-cultural misunderstanding. In the course of teaching, the foreign language teachers should pay attention to the forms of negation in English and Chinese, making comparisons between the forms of negation in English and Chinese. Moreover, they should try to arouse students'cross-cultural pragmatic awareness.