A Study Of The Europeanized Chinese Constructions In Lao She's Camel Xiangzi

Language, the most important means of communication, is rarely self-sufficient. In addition, as an integral part of human society, language is also not isolated from other languages. After the May 4th Movement, the emergence of large numbers of translation works accelerated the language contact between English and Chinese. With the Chinese internal development in itself, language contact gave rise to the influence of English on Chinese in every aspect, which is called Europeanized Chinese phenomenon.Since the first introduction of the Europeanized Chinese phenomenon, people showed different opinions towards it. Moreover, the outer expression of the Europeanized Chinese phenomenon, the measuring standards and the causes of this phenomenon all attracted scholars'attention. On the basis of former studies, guided by language contact and contrastive analysis theories, this thesis tries to have an analysis of the Europeanized Chinese constructions in Camel Xiangzi, a masterpiece of Lao She, the famous writer and language master, hoping to study the Europeanized Chinese constructions in his novels which are usually characterized by local language, and to analyze the English influence on written Chinese in the aspect of syntax. In addition, with the research of Lao She's choice of Europeanized Chinese constructions, this thesis discusses the right attitude and proper use of these constructions, and has an outlook of the future development of Europeanized Chinese constructions. Therefore, the thesis supplies a new angle for the study of Lao She's works, help people to better understand English influence on Chinese, improve the proper use of Europeanized Chinese constructions, and greatly help the healthy development of Modern Chinese.On the basis of language contact theory and contrastive analysis theory, this research makes a review of the definition, introduction, origin, previous studies, and the academic attitudes toward the Europeanized Chinese phenomenon. It also analyzes the life and works of Lao She, which has been followed by an introduction to the language stylistics of Camel Xiangzi. The most important part of this research focuses on the analysis of the six kinds of Europeanized Chinese constructions in Camel Xiangzi, namely, variety of speaker's position in direct speech, increasing use of subjects, new use of parentheses, lengthy, complicated attributes and post-positioned attributes, the position of adverbial and adverbial clause, and increasing use and position changing of linking words. Influenced by the flexible English language, speaker's position in traditional Chinese is enriched from the very beginning of the sentence to the middle or end of the speech, and the speaker can even be omitted; the fixed pre-positioned attributes are sometimes post-positioned; the adverbial in traditional Chinese is put after subject and before predicate, and now it can be put before the subject; the complex sentence has also changed from subordinate-main clause pattern into both subordinate-main, and main-subordinate pattern. In addition, the increasing of subjects, linking expressions and the appearance of complicated attributes all reflect the influence of English. At last, the parentheses are more widely used affected by English, and the function of the parentheses has been enlarged from irrelevant casual use into supplying more related information. Through the analysis of the choice of Europeanized Chinese constructions in Camel Xiangzi, it is obvious that Lao She, the outstanding writer and language master, did not passively adopt all the Europeanized Chinese constructions without any choice, but selected them according to the need of his works. Finally, the study comes to a general conclusion through a brief study of the over-use of English in Modern Chinese: a proper use of Europeanized Chinese constructions can enrich the expressing of Chinese, increase the diversity of Chinese language structures, and which in turn improve the expression of the theme in writing. In addition, the proper use of Europeanized Chinese Constructions in Camel Xiangzi well illustrates that the Western constructions should not only be adopted but also be naturalized in Chinese.