Corpus Based Contrastive Analysis Of English And Chinese Prepositions

Both English and modern Chinese are Analytical languages, but they are quite different from each other. As a kind of common part of speech, the role of prepositions in English and Chinese is so special, and many are complicated in use.Preposition is a closed set of part of speech either in Chinese or in English. But in these two languages, there are several controversial or difficult-to -grasp points. In Chinese, the sources of some prepositions are controversial; the degree of some Chinese prepositions'grammaticalization is not sure; Chinese prepositions often can be omitted while using; Identities of the second part of Chinese circumpositions are also controversial; The words sequence of some sentences which have some certain Chinese prepositions, such as把,给,问are influenced by the prepositions used; In Chinese, some prepositions have the same meaning, whether they can swap for each other is restricted by the syllable number of the word after it, whether it is spoken language or written language. Many people who are learning Chinese would be confused while learning or using. As for English prepositions, they are so verbal-like and forced in use that learners in China may make mistakes or be puzzled easily; some certain words like granted are lost their way home; many English prepositions are polysemic, which are also hard to learn grasp.In the process of my contrastive analysis the prepositions in these two languages, I will use corpus to get the frequency of their occurrence, the number of them and the features of their distribution, so that our numbers and conclusions are based on language facts. I will also use Fillmore's Deep Structure Semantic Case to compare and use quite a few examples from English dictionaries to check or prove them. I will also try my best to get a charm of Chinese-English Prepositions corresponding relationship based on the Deep Structure Semantic Case.