Translation And Europeanized Grammar In Modern Written Chinese

Translation is one special form of language contact. In translating process, the source language and the target language contact and interact with each other in the mind of the translator, which will inevitably bring impact to each language involved and result in language borrowing or language change in the end. Through language contact and penetration of foreign culture with the aid of translation, the target language can get itself improved and perfected. This kind of phenomenon is quite common in the history of many countries around the world.Since the May Fourth Movement, the Chinese language has experienced significant changes under the impact of the external influences like the drastic changes in social life and language contact through translation. With translation in a large scale of the Western literary works during the past century, the Chinese language now bears obviously the mark of Western language influence. A large number of Europeanized constructions and expressions have come into Chinese with the aid of translation, hence forming a typical phenomenon in Modern Chinese-Europeanized Grammar. The Europeanization of Chinese grammar is one of the great events in history. And the evolution of the Vernacular Chinese after the May Fourth period into today's Modern Chinese is virtually a process of constant Europeanization.The studies of Europeanization can be dated back to as early as the 1920s. However, up to now, most studies in this field are prescriptive which are limited to merely argument for or against the Europeanization of Chinese, and have to a large extent overlooked the fact that Europeanized Grammar is already a fact of existence in Modern Chinese. Few systemic and comprehensive descriptive studies of Europeanized Grammar are available up till now, let alone the interpretive studies based upon detailed and comprehensive observations of the Europeanized Grammar. This thesis then attempts to present a comparatively systemic and comprehensive investigation of the Europeanized Grammar inModern Chinese. Taking a descriptive approach, the study also tends to interpret how a Europeanized construction, at first merely a kind of language performance of a specific translator, becomes assimilated into the system of the target language. It is hoped that this attempt can present some useful tips for studies of language change and translation practices.Firstly, the thesis indicates that the present study is a systemic categorization and investigation of the Europeanized Grammar in Modern Chinese.Then the thesis reviews briefly the historical and present situation of Europeanization of Chinese language and attempts to present a brief survey of the previous studies on Europeanized Grammar in Modern Chinese. There were at least three waves of translation in Chinese history and each has exerted significant influences on Chinese. Grammatical Europeanization started during the May Fourth period and is still continuing in contemporary Chinese. However, most previous prescriptive studies of Europeanized Grammar were based on superficial impressions and subjective judgments, which could not come to any convincing conclusion.The thesis divides Europeanized Grammar in Modern Chinese into two categories: morphological and syntactic Europeanization. Morphological Europeanization of Modern Chinese mainly consists of two sub-categories. The first one is the acceleration of affixation in Modern Chinese. The second is the Europeanization of the pluralizing sign "men". Besides detailed description and exemplification of the two sub-categories, the thesis also attempts to investigate the historical and social factors underlying morphological Europeanization in Modern Chinese.Europeanized Grammar in syntactic level of Chinese is quite complex and numerous. It is hard to cover all in the thesis because of the limitation of space. Thus the thesis categorizes various Europeanized constructions in Chinese and chooses some typical categories as the subject of the investigation. Such categories include: increase of sub...