Ordering Distributions Of Mian And Temporal Clauses In Chinese And English And Their Competing Motivations

The thesis contrasts,from the perspective of linguistic typology,ordering distributions of main and temporal clauses in Chinese and English and their patterns in competing motivations.There are three parts in the thesis:First of all,the thesis examines ordering distributions of main and adverbial clauses and the broadening Hierarchy of Diessel(2001)in Chinese and English.Using corpus data from spoken Chinese and English,it is shown that both two languages in general conform to Diessel's Hierarchy.The major difference between the two languages lies in that adverbial clauses usually follow the main clause in English,whereas they tend to precede the main clause in Chinese.And the analysis finds that,in Chinese,conditional,concessive,temporal and causal clauses precede the main clause more often than in English.Secondly,based on three different comparative principles(including EnglishChinese,English-Chinese translations,Chinese-English translations),the research contrasts ordering distributions of main and temporal clauses in Chinese and English.Based on the first comparative principle,it is found that there is a clear correlation between clause order and iconicity of sequence: temporal clauses denoting a prior event precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses of posteriority both in Chinese and English.However,in Chinese,temporal clauses denoting a prior and simultaneous event precede the main clause more often than in English.It is also shown that complex sentences with initial clauses are more often iconic than complex sentences with final clauses in English,whereas complex sentences with final clauses are more often iconic than complex sentences with initial clauses in Chinese.At the same time,based on the Chinese translations of English temporal clauses and on the English translations of Chinese temporal clauses,the research attempts to reveal the difference that mentioned above and their characteristics,as well as the translation universals,such as simplification,explicitation,normalization and so on.Thirdly,following the line of Diessel(2005),by investigating the effect of the iconicity of sequence on the(temporal)complex sentences generated from the spoken corpus and the conversation genre of dramas,the study has argued and presented evidences that,not only initial occurrence but also final occurrence of temporal clauses are motivated by discourse pragmatic forces.Specifically,it is shown that the main clause tends to precede the temporal clauses when it is the given information or keeps the cohesion of discourse.What's more,it is shown that,except the motivations proposed by Diessel(2005),the positioning of temporal clauses is also motivated by other factors involving syntax,pragmatics and lexicon.Specifically,the different positional patterns are motivated by different patterns in competing motivations and the interaction of factors.Lastly,by the investigation of other VO languages,it is preliminary deduced that the position of adverbial clauses is in general consistent with the position of their adverbials,which is an important factor of resulting in different positional patterns(pre-or pos-)of temporal clauses in Chinese and English.