A Contrastive Study Of E/P Clauses In English And Chinese From The Perspective Of Grammatical Metaphor Theory

This dissertation makes a contrastive study of English and Chinese E/P Clauses with cognitive grammar theory from the perspective of systematic-functional linguistic grammatical metaphor.The thesis mainly focuses on the analysis of the ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function of the Metaphorical E/P Clauses in both English and Chinese,and compares the similarities and differences of English and Chinese,and carries out cognitive interpretations.The paper made the following findings.First of all,similarities between English and Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses have been identified.Firstly,in terms of ideational function,both English and Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses have projections from the process of E/P to material and mental process in transitivity system;And both English and Chinese have“locational”,“directional”,and“possessive”E/P Clauses.Secondly,in terms of interpersonal function,the main interpersonal function is to convey new information and elicit new topics.The analysis of the interpersonal function shows that the main semantic function of English and Chinese E/P Clauses is expressing the objective existence of things,which are highly objective and low subjective sentences.Thirdly,in terms of textual function,the information structures of English and Chinese E/P Clauses are the same.Both of the entities expressing the new information are located at the center of the terminal,which conforms to the most common structure of information unit that the new information goes after given information.And new information is expressed by indefinite words,which is in line with the principle of introducing new information.Both English and Chinese E/P Clauses realize the functions of topic introduction and connecting link between the preceding and the following through introducing and elicitating contextual information.Then differences between English and Chinese E/P Clauses have also been identified.Firstly,from ideational function perspective:The study finds that English Congruent E/P Clauses is“There+Be+Entity+Locative”;Chinese Congruent E/P Clauses is“Locative+you??;have?/shi??;is?+Entity”.In English,the location is usually composed of prepositional phrases that indicate the meaning of location,but in Chinese,the frequently seen location is a noun plus orientation word,or it can be just a location word or a noun or pronouns that represents a place.The verb in English Congruent E/P Clauses is various variants of be and the extended verbs of English E/P Clauses include“stand”,“grow”,“live”,“sit”and so on,while the verbs in Chinese Congruent E/P Clauses is you??;have?/shi??;is?and the extended verbs of Chinese E/P Clauses include zhang??;grow?,gua??;hang?,chui??;dangle?,xie??;write?,fang??;put?,zuo??;sit?,tie??;stick?and so on.Moreover,the type of process projection in Chinese is more complex,with projections from the process of E/P to material process,mental process,and relational process and verbal process.English has attributive and acting relational E/P Clauses,but Chinese does not.English Metaphorical E/P Clauses often don't specify the doer of the action,and the agent is universality and uncertainty,while in Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses,the agent is usually for a particular individual and is expressed.Secondly,from interpersonal function perspective:In English,“there be”is called“the mood”in the interpersonal function,“there”and“be”is the subject and finite element respectively.However Chinese mainly uses mood words?such as“le??;LE?”,“ma??;MA?”,“ne??;NE?”,“ba??;BA?”,“a??;A?”etc?,and additional negative elements?such as“shibushi?????”,“huibuhui?????”etc?to express various types of mood.In English E/P Clauses,modal words are used to express modality.Just as in English,Chinese has corresponding auxiliary verbs,sentence or structure for the expression of modality.In the meanwhile,in English Metaphorical E/P Clauses,the subject is not only served by unstressed there but also prepositional phrases that indicate a location;While in Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses,the subject of mood system is only realized by the prepositional phrases that indicate a location.In addition,the finite is realized by verbs with a static meaning such as“lie”,“appear”,“live”,“sat”,“stood”,etc.But in Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses,since there is no finite element in Chinese like English verbs,there is no case of expressing the mood by the matching of the subject and the finite element.Lastly,from textual function perspective:In English Congruent E/P Clauses,the“thematic build-up”is served by“there be”and the enhanced theme is by the entity;The prepositional phrases with location meaning play the role of the unmarked new information.But in Chinese Congruent E/P Clauses,the location is the theme and the entity is the subject theme.As for the informational system,the location is the given information while the entity is the new information.However,in English Metaphorical E/P Clauses,the“thematic build-up”is served by“there+V_Existence”and the enhanced theme is by the entity;In Chinese Metaphorical E/P Clauses,the location is the theme as well as the given information and the entity is the subject theme and the new information.