The Attribution-Predication Opposition Between English And Chinese And The Shifting In Translation

This paper argues that attribution-predication opposition is a major syntactic difference between English and Chinese. There are various factors underlying the difference. There are overt syntactic ones, covert semantic ones and stylistic ones.In the syntactic level, the predicate positions of English and Chinese are confined to opposing abstract rules. The two languages differ in their categorization and sub-categorization of word class and their marking systems. This falls within the covert semantic factors. Also, English and Chinese diverge a lot in their definitions of a good style. A good Chinese style is diffusive in syntax while a good English style is compact in syntax.The attribution-predication opposition requires an attribution-predic--ation shifting in E-C Translation and a predication-attribution shifting in C-E translation.This paper consists of three parts: introduction, the body and conclusion. In the introduction, a brief account of relevant studies is offered with due attention to questions unanswered. The body is made up of three chapters. The first chapter gives a preliminary description of the general attribution-predication opposition between English and Chinese. The second chapter investigates into the underlying factors and the law by which attribution-predication shifting operates. The third chapter demonstrates with examples the way shifting takes place. The first two chapters constitute the theoretic proportion of the paper, with the first chapter serving to describe and the second aiming at explaining. The last chapter involves the application of the results of the previous study. The conclusion part, after giving a sum-up of the whole paper, points out:The differences between English and Chinese in the syntactic rules,marking devices and syntactic styles are what underlie the attribution-predication shifting between them. Meanwhile, the two languages share the marking pattern of the attribute and predicate. This language universal is the motivation of correspondence, which is basic and most frequently practiced in translation.