A Contrastive Study Of The Logical Relations And Their Realizations Between German And Chinese Clauses:A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

The study of logical relations of clauses has been one of the hot topics in the academic field.German,a typical Indo-European language,and Chinese,a typical Sino-Tibetan language,have both achieved fruitful results in the study of logical relations of clauses.However,the research results are not very useful to each other,and there are not enough comprehensive and systematic comparative studies between the two languages.The main reasons for this are as follows:(1)The study of logical relations of clauses in German and Chinese are different in terms of the definition of basic concepts,the scope and focus of research,which results in the "two-skin"puzzle of German and Chinese studies and the lack of dialogue between them.(2)The research on the logical relations of German and Chinese clauses has not adopted a comparable theoretical framework.Most of the studies on the logical relations of Chinese clauses are based on the framework of Chinese simple and compound sentence system,while most of the studies on the logical relations of German clauses are based on the framework of Indo-European logical system,which leads to the lack of comparative foundation.In response to these problems,this study employs Systemic Functional Linguistics as a theoretical framework to compare logic relations and their realizations between German and Chinese clauses,to deepen the understanding of these two languages and to promote the dialogue between Chinese studies and the outside world as well as the internationalization of local studies.As a general linguistic theory,SFL is characterized by the universality of cross-linguistic research.Its core concept of "meaning-centered,form realizing meaning",its systemic and functional ideas provide a solid theoretical foundation for contrasting logic relations of German and Chinese clauses.At the micro-level,SFL provides a more complete logical system framework for the comparison of German and Chinese clauses.Based on the similarities and differences in the logical relations and their realizations between German and Chinese clauses,this study explores the causes for the differences and similarities in the logical combinations of German and Chinese clauses from the perspectives of language typology,ethnic cognition,ethnic thinking and ethnic culture,to reveal the cognitive,thinking and cultural roots behind them.Thus,this study answers three questions:(1)From the perspective of SFL,what are the differences and similarities in the logical relations and their realizations between the embedded clauses and the central words within the German and Chinese word groups?(2)From the perspective of SFL,what are the differences and similarities in the logical relations and realizations between German and Chinese clauses?(3)What' are the root causes of these differences and similarities?This study adopts logical system of SFL as the framework,and the research method of qualitative analysis is mainly supplemented by quantitative analysis for comparison.To address the first question,it was concluded that(1)from the the perspectives of taxis,both German and Chinese clauses are embedded as components within word groups,and they constitute an embedding relation;in terms of logico-semantic relation,both German and Chinese embedded clauses and the central words in groups can form two types of relationships:embedded expansion and embedded projection.(2)At the syntactic level,the embedded logical relations in German and Chinese are realized by different grammatical structures:in German,the embedded clause is usually located after the central word,and the embedded clause is guided by an explicit relational pronoun,and different relational pronouns can be used to express different relations,and the clause itself has different sequential structures;in Chinese,the embedded clause is usually located before the central word,and the two are connected by the structural auxiliary "de",and in different grammatical environments,there are vacancy and complete structures,explicit and implicit structures of embedded clauses.For the second problem,the following findings were found:(1)From the perspective of taxis,both German and Chinese clauses can form coordinated and embedded relations,and the embeddedness of clauses varies in degree and that it forms a continuum with strongest and weakest in its two poles.The difference lies in the fact that the German embedding tends to be discrete,while the Chinese embedding tends to be vague.(2)From the perspective of the relations of expansion,each type of relation can be expressed in German and Chinese by both explicit and implicit means.The difference lies in the fact that in German,the explicit mode is a non-marking means and the implicit mode is a marking means;in Chinese,both explicit and implicit modes are universal means of expressing logical relations.In addition,there are differences between German and Chinese in terms of the position of logical markers,the tightness of the combination of logical markers and clauses,and the syntactic structure of the connected clauses.(3)From the perspective of the relations of projection,both verbal and psychological projection in German and Chinese contain two parts,i.e.,the projected information and the projective source.From the perspective of the projected information,verbal projection in German tends to be dominated by the reporting mode,while verbal projection in Chinese tends to be dominated by the quoting mode;the typical mode of mental projection in German and Chinese is both reporting,not quoting.From the perspective of the projective source,German and Chinese projective verbs are classified similarly,but their specific usage differs.From the perspective of the positional relation between the projected information and the projective source,the verbal projection clause placed before the projected clause in German and Chinese is the dominant order,and this proportional advantage is not obvious in German;both German and Chinese mental projections have the projection clause placed before the projected clause as the dominant order,and the percentage of this dominant order is significantly higher in German than in Chinese.In response to the third question,it was found that(1)from the perspective of language typology,German and Chinese belong to different morphological and word order types,which give rise to different structures,sequences,and position relations in their clause combinations.(2)From the perspective of ethnic cognition,this study tries to explain the similarities and differences of clause combinations between the two languages by the category theory,figure-ground theory,and iconicity theory.(3)From the perspective of ethnic thinking,the differences in logical combinations of German and Chinese can be attributed to different modes of thinking:German favors ontological inquiry,which stems from a subject-object separation mode of thinking;Chinese values subject integration,which stems from a subject-object integration mode of thinking.(4)From the perspective of ethnic culture,the German language reflects the tendency to separate the subject from the object,which can be traced back to the European classical culture and Christian culture;the Chinese language reflects the tendency to integrate the subject and the object,which can be traced back to Confucianism and Taoism;this is also closely related to the different geographical environment and way of life of the German and Chinese people.By a contrastive study of logical relations between German and Chinese clauses within the framework of SFL,this study summarizes the similarities and differences in the logical relations and their realizations of the two languages,and tries to explore the underlying causes of these differences and similarities,to a certain extent,for the convergence and dialogue between the two languages,and better reflection of the similarities and differences of them.In particular,it also highlights the essential differences between the two languages.Theoretically,this study enriches the theory of SFL itself;practically,it provides certain reference values for German and Chinese teaching and translation practice.