Contrast Between Chinese And English Double Negative Sentences And Their Application In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Double negation is a special language phenomenon in which there are twonegative expressions; one of them exerts influence on the other to make apositive meaning. In particular context, double negation can express specialmeaning and get effective rhetorical result which a common positive sentencecan not.Double negation, as a universally used linguistic structure, has beenattracting the attention of scholars at home and abroad. But up to the time thisthese is made, the research of double negation is limited to the study andanalysis of the definition, the surface structure and the functions; what’smore, the research is mainly restricted to one particular language. In thispaper, based on some theories on contrastive linguistics, cognitive linguistics,semantics and pragmatics, we make a comparison between Chinese andEnglish double negation from the perspectives of syntax, semantics andpragmatics in order to find out the similarities and differences between them.In the last chapter, we apply what we have analyzed to teaching, introducingsome strategies of teaching double negation in TCSL (Teaching Chinese as aSecond Language).Based on the analysis of a large number of linguistic facts, we find thatthere are both similarities and differences between Chinese double negationand its English counterpart. The reason of differences is that the approach toexpress negation in Chinese is relatively homogeneous, while in English theway to express negation is much more complicated and diverse no matter inthe aspect of formation of negative words and in the aspect of syntacticposition.Semantically, both Chinese and English double negation can be used tostrengthen or weaken positive meaning. What is different is that in non-standard English, double negation can make negative meaning stronger. Concerning the issue why double negation can express affirmative meaningand make the tone firmer or more euphemistic and polite, we makeexplanations from the perspective of semantics, cognitive linguistics andpragmatics, so bringing the research of double negation to the height ofhuman cognition and the use of language.After the clear comparative analysis of Chinese and English doublenegation from the aspects of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, based onsome difficulties faced by the foreign students in the studying and using ofdouble negation, we introduce some strategies of teaching double negation inTCSL.