A Comparative Analysis Of Causative Sentences In English, Japanese, Korean And Chinese

"Causative" is a general semantic category in human language. Causative means someone or something causes behaviour and implementation of process. There are causative sentences in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese but the sentence composition, the order of components and semantic relation among components is different. Through the comparative analysis in these four languages of syntax structure, the paper analyses the order of causative sentence components, valence of predicate verb and PRO phenomenon. Through the comparison of the semantic elements of causative sentences in four languages, the paper analyses rules of causative force and meaning of causative, and the limitation to causer and causee in causative sentences among different language types. Through the comparative analysis of causative sentence in structure and semantics in the languages studied, the writer was able to establish some conclusions. In structure filed:1) In English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese causative sentences, the predicate verbs are bivalent verbs. Their thematic grids are all{agent, patient}. According to Chomsky's thematic theory, there is PRO in four kinds of languages and the PRO is object control.2) In Japanese and Korean causative sentence structure NP1+NP3+NP2+VP1+VP2, subject NP1 and object NP3 have their own case particle. NP3 is the patient of verb V2, NP3 is the dative case in surface structure. In semantics filed:3) There are four semantic elements in the surface structure of four kinds of languages. The four elements are causer, driving force, causee and result.4) As elements of the causative sentence, results in English and Japanese causative sentences have a very clear meaning of result, while in Korean and Chinese causative sentences, when the complement is an adjective that express mental state,the resultative meaning is clear, whereas when the complement is a verb, the resultative meaning is not clear.5) When Japanese and Korean causer and causee of causative sentences have the [+animate] feature, there exist some relations in a particular field between causer and causee, such as policeman and thieves, older and younger people, leaders and subordinates, teachers and students etc. The relationship between causer and causee is not clear in English and Chinese causative sentences. The degree of interpretation of causation in four languages can be expressed:Japanese> Korean> English> Chinese.