Contrastive Analysis Of Quantifiers In Chinese And English From A Cognitive Perspective

This dissertation provides a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese quantifiers from a cognitive perspective. As we know, cognitive ability of human being has been a central core in research of system-functional grammar. And this thesis attempts to observe the reflection of cognitive ability through language. The paper picks"quantifier"as the research object, analyzing the expressions in the this field of two languages. Exploring into the differences and similarities of the languages and causes are of great significance in both theory and practice.As a branch of Sino-Tibetan language family, Chinese has an abundance of quantifiers which are extremely active and that is one of the most distinctive features compared with other languages. Chinese quantifiers orient from various sources and some of them are transferred from nouns. And their formation takes a long period of time, which means this word class does not exit from the very beginning. Whereas English belongs to the Indian-European family and there is no word class of quantifiers in traditional English grammar. However, it is expressed in different terms by linguists. For convenience of expression, we use the same word"quantifier"to indicate the words expressing the concept of quantity in English. In fact, English quantifiers form a huge language system, which plays an important role in expressing the quantity of things in English. The commonness of human languages shows that human's cognition of"quantity", one of the most important features in nature, has deeply influenced the human language system. Both English and Chinese have the system of quantifiers, for example, we say"一张纸"in Chinese, and we have"a sheet of paper"in English. But the categories of quantity in English still belong to nouns. Among quantifiers in Chinese, there are more quantifiers indicating individuals with strong specificity, but less quantifiers indicating groups with strong universality; while in English the situation is just reversed. It is claimed that the differences between English and Chinese quantifiers are only present in the amount of quantifiers, the representing forms, and the use of different quantifiers to express various objects.It is also found that the collocation of quantifiers and objects depend on the different perspectives and the ways of salience of the cognitive subjects. Due to human's different perspectives of understanding, the same object produces different images in human'mind, which produces different expression potentials further; and the language expression of"one object for multiple quantifiers"and"one quantifier for multiple objects"appears in the application of quantifiers. Lakoff claims that metaphor is everywhere. Therefore, although quantifier is considered as a special word class in Chinese while quantifier in English is not, in both of them there exists a great deal of metaphors and rich expressiveness. There is difference between quantifiers in the two languages. Understanding this special language phenomenon is of great significance to translation and foreign language teaching...