A Contrastive Analysis Of Conjunction Between The Texts Of English And Chinese

Conjunction, as one of the most important cohesive devices in both Chinese and English texts, builds up cohesive relations among clauses, sentences etc. by way of presupposing the presence of other elements through the logical relations between different elements in a text. Conjunction is represented by different kinds of conjunctives,which are of great significance to texture and coherence of texts in both languages.The purpose of the present study is to make a detailed contrastive analysis to conjunction in texts of both languages. Based on the theory about categorizing conjunctive markers in terms of their logico-semantic relations proposed by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar and illustrated by many examples of conjunction in English and Chinese texts, the study analyzes the similarities and mainly the differences of conjunction in both languages, in order to explore the internal nature and reasons of these differences, then applies the research achievements to translation and teaching & learning of conjunction.The thesis consists of three parts:The first part is Introduction, which makes an overview to the representative theories proposed by scholars at home and abroad and to their achievements on the research of conjunction and especially analyzes the development of Halliday's theory of cohesion, and also includes the purpose and significance of the study.The second part, from Chapter 1 to Chapter 5, is the essential part of this thesis.Chapter 1 is concerned with some technical terms, such as text, cohesion and coherence, then defines conjunction and analyzes the classification of conjunction by several representative scholars at home and abroad, and briefly states the approach to this thesis.Based on the new classification proposed by Halliday in his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Chapter 2 subcategorizes conjunction and lists conjunctives of different kind in English and corresponding ones in Chinese, just making a simple comparison among them.Chapter 3 makes a contrastive analysis to conjunctions in texts of English and Chinese, mainly the differences between them---explicitness in English and implicitness in Chinese. The implicitness of conjunction in Chinese appears mainly in the form of asyndetic conjunction, which is often embodied in compressed sentences and four-character construction. This chapter focuses on the asyndetic conjunction in Chinese, and illustrates asyndetic conjunction in terms of four types (additive, adversative, causal and temporal) respectively with examples in Chinese.Chapter 4 explores the reasons for the differences of conjunctions between English and Chinese i.e. hypotaxis is prominent in English and parataxis in Chinese; linear sentence in Chinese is a distinctive syntactical construction; and there are great differences in culture and modes of thinking between native English-speakers and native Chinese-speakers.Chapter 5 deals with the methods concerning conjunction in translation and analyzes the application of this contrastive study to English teaching and learning according to the differences of conjunction both in English and Chinese.Finally, we draw a conclusion. The main difference of conjunction between texts of English and Chinese is more explicitness in English and more implicitness in Chinese, which is mainly reflected by asyndetic conjunction. Through contrastive analysis to conjunction, we find that hypotaxis is prominent in English and parataxis is prominent in Chinese. However, this is caused by the different cultural backgrounds and different modes of thinking between English and Chinese. An appropriate understanding of these differences is an inspiration to translation between English and Chinese and to the teaching and learning of English.