A Contrastive Study On Sentence Order Constrai Nts Between Korean And Chinese

Korean is a language with the structure of SOV, which is considered relatively free from the order. But researchers widely consider that this kind of free order is not unlimited, instead, it is restricted by some factors. Chinese’s structure is SVO. Its sentence order is relatively stationary. However, this fixity is not unconditionally, for there is a certain degree of flexibility in it. There are many researches on factors that restrict the sentence order of Korean or Chinese; but there are few researches on factors that restrict the Sentence order of the both languages. The aim of this essay is to analyze the factors that restrict the sentence order of Korean and Chinese, based on comparability of them, and to sum up the syntactic features of Korean and Chinese from the similarities and the differences between them. Thus, the restricting syntactic factors of Korean and Chinese are chosen to be the objects of this paper. This thesis is divided into five chapters.In chapter1, the significance, research status, relevant theory and research methods of researching Korean and Chinese sentence order constraints are mainly explained. Sentence order typology, structural linguistics and functional linguistics theory provide a theoretical foundation and methodological guidance.Chapter2discusses the fixed sentence order and free sentence order of Korean and Chinese, and contrastively analyzes the syntactic factors of the sentence order constraints of Korean and Chinese. The order of sentence elements must conform to the syntax requirements in the fixed sentence order of Korean and Chinese. This requirement also applies to the free sentence order, which means that there are certain rules and restrictions in it. Under this premise, from the perspective of typology, this chapter investigates the order between the different components of Korean and Chinese, then analyzes and summarizes the syntactic constraints of the two languages, and then compares the similarities and differences of the sentence order constraints between the two languages which belong to two different grammatical systems.In chapter3, the semantic factors of sentence order constraints of Korean and Chinese are discussed from the perspective of the thematic roles and semantic cases. This chapter analyzes the predicate semantics and thematic roles which restrict the sentence order of Korean, as well as the semantic cases and semantic features of verbs which restrict the sentence order of Chinese. Also the constraints of the arrangement in existential sentences of Korean and Chinese are analyzed. Then it tries to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages on the semantic factors in sentence order constraints.The fourth chapter, in terms of the pragmatic factors of sentence order constraints, this thesis investigates the sentence order constraints of Korean and Chinese from the perspective of information structure. Syntactic and semantic study mainly refers to the static analysis and description of sentences, while pragmatic research studies the dynamic change of sentences in context. The speaker may emphasize a certain expression by rearranging the sentence order, and this rearrangement is the information structure. So this chapter focuses on analyzing the similarities and differences of sentence order constraints between Korean and Chinese from the aspects of theme and focus.The fifth chapter draws a conclusion. It summarizes the main points of this thesis, and puts forward the unresolved issues.