A Contrastive Study Of Lexicalization Patterns Of Agentive State Change Events In English And Chinese

Most linguists have devoted themselves to the study of language typology in order to explore the commonality of language,and Leonard Talmy has also done lots of researches.Talmy explores language typology from the perspective of lexicalization pattern theory,Event Integration,and some other relevant theories.His researches not only provide a solid theoretical foundation for researchers,but also help to further explore the universality of language.By studying the lexicalization patterns of motion events,Talmy argues that the world’s languages can be divided into two main types: satellite-framed languages and verb-framed languages.However,most domestic and foreign scholars pay more attention to motion verbs,namely the motion events,and rarely focuses on the other four kinds of framing events.Therefore,this thesis studies from another framing event,that is,choosing agentive state change events as the research perspective.Agentive state change event is a small category of state change events.According to Talmy,in the state change events,English exhibits a parallel system of conflation,whereas modern Chinese is a far more thoroughgoing example of the satellite-framed type.In view of this,this thesis is to further confirm the language type of Chinese,whether it is as Talmy said.The current research focuses on the following issues:In the selection of data,this paper selects the expressions of agentive state change events from the 7 English original novels,and then finds the corresponding Chinese translation.First,the proportion of lexicalization patterns of the selected sentences is counted,and then,to analyze the characteristics of lexicalization patterns of agentive state change events in English and Chinese.Finally,to analyze the similarities and differences between lexicalization patterns of English and Chinese,exploring the causes of differences,and quite a few influences on language teaching and language learning.As to linguistic theory,based on the theory of Talmy and the research background of Li Fuyin,this thesis attempts to analyze how English and Chinese represent agentive state change events respectively from the form and meaning.In terms of research methods,this thesis adopts a method to have aquantitative analysis of the selected data which integrates contrastive and analysis,description and explanation.When explaining the causes of the differences,a little diachronic study has involved.Through the analysis of linguistic data,in agentive state change events,Chinese,as English,has the characteristics of both satellite-framed and verb-framed type.Chinese exhibits an intermixed system of conflation,it is mainly based on satellite-framed language,complemented by verb-framed language.In addition,English is prone to use verbs to express the changed state,while modern Chinese mainly uses satellites to express.Although English and Chinese have the same lexicalization pattern,there are some differences in specific application,not one to one correspondence,such as verbs to verbs,satellites to satellites.To illustrate the causes,this thesis explains from three aspects: the way of thinking,the evolution of Chinese verb-complement construction and the phenomenon of double tone.By analyzing the similarities and differences,it will be beneficial for language learning.