A Typological Approach To The Contrastive Study Of Adjectives Across Chinese And English

Word class is the foundation of linguistic research. Cross-language comparison of adjectives can provide a new approach to the study of word classes in Chinese. Chinese adjectives have been the research focus of both Chinese lingustics and linguistic typology. Firstly, the present research has made tentative efforts in introducing linguistic typological studies into the contrastive study of English and Chinese. As the research basis of the whole paper, a new research framework of directional and multi-level cross-language comparative study of of word classes has been established, based on a thorough argumentation of the four aspects of comparison, i.e. basis, scope, methods as well as systemic perspectives of comparative research. Secondly, the author has established a multi-lingual database including the grammar descriptions of more than150languages as well as the two inventories of English and Chinese adjectives. Based on such databases, the Chinese and English adjectives have been contrasted in terms of their semantic categories, morphological patterns, syntactical prominence and pragmatic issues concerned. Thirdly, the findings then are put into the much wider research scope of world languages for multi-lateral investigations, i.e. putting Chinese into sino-Tibetan language family and English into Indo-European family and then comparing both the two languages with others from other language families, so that a panoramic view of the linguistic typological features of adjectives of the two languages can be displayed with such a more stratified background of world languages. Finally, after an exploration of the differences of encoding strategies for properties and states of affairs between Chinese and English, this study tries to explain the findings from the perspective of generative lingustic typology and lists a series of language parameters influencing and restricting the encoding of adjectives in languages. With the tentatively established cross-language compasison model of word class from the perspective of linguistic typology, this research will directly enhance the study of Chinese adjectives and the contrastive study between Chinese and English by integrating and mutually complementing multiple methods of research. It will not only contribute to the study of linguistic typology and Chinese word classes but also benefit the teaching of Chinese and English as second languages, Chinese-English translation studies as well as compilation of Chinese-English dictionaries.