A Corpus-Based Contrastive Analysis Between Chinese Caused-Motion Ba-Construction And Its English Translation

Causation is an indispensable concept in the objective and real world. It refers to such a situation in which one entity imposes force on another entity, which experiences a physical or metaphorical change in location or state thereafter. Based on the real world experience, the causation concept is cognitively mapped into language semiotically and generates different causative constructions which can be classified into caused-result construction and caused-motion construction. Researchers at home and abroad have studied causation and causative constructions from various perspectives. Conventional linguistic studies put an emphasis on causative verbs, which are the core content in the analysis of causative constructions. However, few scholars have made a distinction between caused-result construction and caused-motion construction in the studies. Studies on causative constructions and sentences are not enough and profound especially on the contrastive aspect between Chinese and English. On the basis of cognitive linguistics, this thesis attempts to conduct a research of Ba-construction which is the most basic caused-motion construction in Chinese and make a contrastive analysis between Chinese caused-motion Ba-construction and its English corresponding translation.Caused-motion construction consists of four semantic elements: causer, causing force, causee and moving path. Causer and causee are the two roles involved in the whole caused-motion events and the characteristics and relations between them must be made clear. On the foundation of category theory, this paper first selects a typical Ba-construction in Chinese which expresses the caused-motion concept based on the corpus of Xiamen University. Then the task is to classify the selected data into four types according to the [±animate] semantic factor of the causer and causee and distinguish the typicality and non-typicality of the four types according to statistical analysis. The Ba-construction with animate causer and inanimate causee is the prototype among the four.This paper aims to find out the similarities and differences between caused-motion Ba-construction and its English corresponding translation. A contrastive analysis has been conducted in terms of semantics, syntax and pragmatics. At the semantic level, we find that the similarities are predominant between Chinese and English caused-motion constructions, because caused-motion concept is the most basic one of causation toward the real world experience. Different peoples in the world have almost the same caused-motion concept representation and both Chinese and English people tend to regard caused-motion as a prototype of causation with both typical and non-typical caused-motion, concrete and abstract caused-motion which is basically the motivation for a common understanding and possible communication between nations and also the premise of the contrastive study between Chinese and English caused-motion constructions. The differences mainly lie in the semantic meaning embodied in causative verbs, static and dynamic character of path between Chinese and English.Second, as Chinese and English are of different typologies, this paper finds out that the differences are essential at the syntactic level between Chinese caused-motion Ba-construction and its English corresponding translation. Differences mainly exist in the subject, grammatical function of causative verbs, linguistic form of path, and voice of sentences. In detail, the subject can be omitted in Chinese but must be added in English. And the causative verbs play as predicates in Chinese all the time, but sometimes adverbials in English. The prominent difference is the expression of path. Chinese and English express path by prepositional phrases. Meanwhile, Chinese expresses path by directional verbs, directional verb phrases or the combinations of prepositional phrases and directional verbs. In English, path can be expressed by adverbial particles or implied in the causative verbs. Chinese caused-motion Ba-construction is active in terms of voice, but it can be translated into English passive voice.Third, the major similarity lies in the relationship between linguistic form and concept of the constructions with the real world events. Differences in terms of pragmatics lie in the fact that Chinese caused-motion Ba-construction has explicit causative mark, but there is no equivalent causative mark in English. Meanwhile, Chinese caused-motion construction and its English translation have differences in terms of component default, focal point and emotional function.