The Textual Functions Of English Nominalization And The Chinese Rendering Of EST

Nominalization is a very common phenomenon in English. Structural linguistics, transformational-generative linguistics, cognitive linguistics and systemic-functional linguistics have studied it from different perspectives and have made their own contributions to its study.Based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar, this thesis attempts to make a systematic analysis of the textual functions of English nominalization, and with the analysis as a basis, to probe into the Chinese rendering of EST (English for Science and Technology) as a special register where the use of nominalization is most typical.The thesis first gives an overview of the definition and classification of nominalization, and in much greater depth, discusses the concept of nominalization from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics, including the discussion of grammatical metaphors, 'congruent' and 'non-congruent' realizations, and so on. Then in Chapter 3 it makes a systematic analysis of the textual functions of English nominalization based on Halliday's systemic functional grammar, asserting that the textual functions of English nominalization lie largely in its cohesive function, which can be further described in terms of theme-rheme structure, information structure, grammatical cohesion, and lexical cohesion, and that there are some other textual functions it can perform, namely, to contribute to conciseness, objectivity, and authority of a text, and to trigger presupposition, etc. As a transition to the discussion of the Chinese rendering of EST, a brief survey is made of EST as a register particularly rich in nominalization. To further provide a basis for the discussion of the Chinese rendering of EST, in Chapter 4 a brief contrastive analysis is made of the styles of diction in English and Chinese, coming to the conclusion that English has a tendency towards using nouns, and therefore has more incongruent expressions than Chinese, and Chinese has a tendency towards using verbs, and therefore has more congruent expressions than English. With the preceding discussions as a basis, Chapter 5 deals with the Chinese rendering of nominalization in EST from the perspective of its textual functions. Based on the analysis of the data and with constant reference to the preceding discussions, the thesis has summed up some common Chinese forms for the translation of English nominalizations in EST, namely, equivalent nominalizations, verbs or adjectives, 'subject + verb' or 'verb + object' constructions, clauses, and rearrangement of text structureAs a major means of grammatical metaphor, nominalization is characterized by objectivity, abstractness, and precision, and is therefore frequently used in EST and rightly regarded as one of its main features. The author believes that the reproduction of facts expressed through nominalization in EST is the key to the faithful and accurate rendering of EST into Chinese, and that an inadequate understanding of the textual functions of English nominalization and the differences between English and Chinese in their styles of diction will greatly affect the quality of the Chinese rendering of EST.