A Contrastive Analysis On Word Order In English, French And German Declarative Sentences

Contrastive linguistics is an important branch of linguistics. It is of much practicality in the sense that it is closely related with foreign language learning and teaching and translation. Contrastive study has been widely acknowledged as a typical bilingual or multilingual activity. Therefore, knowledge of the similarities and differences between different languages is helpful in promoting contrastive study. In view of the fact that more and more learners who have studied English choose to learn French or German in China, this paper is devoted to the contrastive analysis on word order in English, French and German declarative sentences in order to contribute to some extent to contrastive linguistic study and help English, French and German learners in study.Word order is an important grammatical item. It is also a hard nut to crack in English, French and German study for the learners. Confined to the length of the thesis, this paper focuses on the contrastive analysis of word order in English, French and German declarative sentences. Contrastive linguistics not only deals with the similarities and differences between the languages concerned but also sets forth the profound reasons behind the linguistic phenomena. Therefore, besides revealing the similarities and differences between English, French and German word order in declarative sentences, the present work also analyzes the profound reasons behind the linguistic phenomena.This paper serves the purpose of promoting the contrastive study and pointing out an effective way to study well English, French and German for the French and German learners who have studied English. The method adopted in the present work is known as contrastive analysis method. The contrastive analysis of word order in English, French and German declarative sentences leads to the result that in some cases the position of subject, predicate, object and some attribute and adverbial is similar in declarative sentences in these languages, but there also exist some differences in the placement of subject, verb, object, attribute and adverbial in these languages. The paper analyzes the linguistic phenomena in depth from the perspectives of word order typology and cognition.The paper is divided into four parts. It is structured as follows. The first part serves asan introduction to the whole paper and starts with the achievements and existing problems in contrastive study. Then it introduces the theme of this paper, states its general purpose and sums up the central idea of the paper. It ends in indicating the overall development of the whole paper. Part two concentrates on the similarities in word order in English, French and German declarative sentences and expounds the profound reasons from the angles of word order typology and cognition. Part three proceeds to set the clarification of the differences between English, French and German word order as the focal point of investigation and analyzes the differences mainly from the angle of linguistic intrinsic mechanism and word order typology. Part two and part three are of great account in the paper. The last part includes the conclusion which sums up the main points of this paper and points some problems that need a further study.