A Comparative Study Of The Comma In English And Chinese

The comma is the most frequently used punctuation mark, but it is often abusively used as well. Many English learners and translators seldom attaches adequate importance to it, so it is no wonder for them to make this or that mistake about it.This paper, made up of four chapters, is thus designed to make a thorough study of the use of the comma in English and Chinese. The first chapter makes a synoptic comparison of the similarities and differences between the basic uses of the comma in English and Chinese. Grounded on the first chapter, new and original in content, the second and the third chapters, employing the theories in phonetics, writing, rhetoric, semantics and aesthetics, further discusses the rhetorical and the semantic functions of the comma in English and Chinese: rhetorically speaking, the comma can be used to clarify, to expound, to substitute, to emphasize, to contrast, to complement, or to vivify; semantically speaking, the comma itself can carry information to indicate certain meaning, or the presence and absence of the comma can cause semantic changes. The fourth chapter applies what has been discussed in the previous chapters to English-Chinese translation. In this last chapter, some successful examples of translation concerning the use of the comma are analyzed in detail, and contrastively, some ill-considered examples, together with the writer's corresponding suggestions of improvement are also provided.Last, the paper proposes that more research should be done on the comma, and other punctuation marks as well.