A Contrastive Study Of The Attributive Clauses Between English And Chinese

The origin of language comparison can be traced back to the ancient times and it has lasted for quite a long developing history. The same phenomenon goes to the comparative studies among languages in the field of linguistics, which started since the beginning of linguistic study. It can be said that the language study and the comparative study among the different languages started at the same time, thus they have the same long history. To the contrastive linguistics, it is a special kind of comparative study. Since 1941 B.L.Whorf the first time indicated the term"contrastive linguistics", it developed flourishingly and became an independent course. In recent decades, Chinese scholars have gradually adopted contrastive linguistics theory——contrastive analysis, and used this method to study the similarities and differences between Chinese and English. Because of its unique syntactic structure, the universality of existence and the high frequency in use in daily communication, the attributive clause has become the focus and hotspot for study today. This paper inherits the predecessors'results of the researches, with the contrastive linguistics theory as its guide, and the thesis tries to analyze the English and Chinese attributive clauses and contrasts the similarities and differences of the attributive clauses. It aims to analyze the similarities and differences between the English and Chinese attributive clauses, and to find which factors result in the difficulties when the language learners to learn the attributive clause.Firstly, this paper discusses the achievements of the domestic and foreign researches, a lot of researches have proved that although English and Chinese belong to different language families, they do exist some similarities and the distinct differences and most scholars focus on the reasons for the differences. When the contrastive analysis of the English and Chinese attributive clauses have been engaged, it is not hard to find that English and Chinese attributive clauses have the similarity in the pragmatic aspect, they both can modify and limit the head noun, so that the listener can easily identify it, and separate it from other nouns. And the modified noun is often used as the subject or the object in the main clause. From the structure aspect, they have syntactic similarity, there exist such structures: S——S type (The modified noun is used as the subject in the main and attributive clauses); S——DO type (The modified noun is used as the subject in the main clause and the object in attributive clause); O——S type (The modified noun is used as the object in the main clause and the subject in attributive clause) and O——DO type (The modified noun is used as the object in the main and attributive clauses). In cognitive aspect, English and Chinese attributive clauses follow the"figure"——"ground"principle, and the description of the headword is from the subjective to objective and at last it is to express the essence. Almost all researches show that there are quite many differences between the English and Chinese attributive clauses. From the aspect of the structure, although they have some similar places, their positions in the sentences are obviously different. Generally speaking, the Chinese attributive clause is located before the modified word, while the majority of English attributive clauses are after the modified word. Moreover, Chinese attributive clauses often use a structural particle de(的) to connect clause and the headword. While the English attributive clause is often required to use the connectives which the first two letters are the"wh-"to introduce a clause. From the aspect of the function, Chinese attributive clause relies mainly on word order, and the empty word etc. to implement the functions, while English attributive clause depends mainly on the structural changes to reflect the functions. Furthermore, beside English attributive clauses have the modified and restricted functions as the Chinese attributive clauses have, and it also has the result, the cause, the condition and other adverbial functions, while the Chinese attributive clause is lack of these functions. From the aspect of the cognition, the Chinese scholars who observe the process to cognize an object are from the"ground"to the"figure", which directly gives the learners a"figure"with a complete or a certain"ground". But the English scholars who cognize an object are from the"figure"to the"ground"and the "figure"is gradually completed and clear. Especially in the attributive clause, when stating some important information, the English scholars usually put the important information at the beginning, abides by the"head-weight"principle, that is to say, when the English speakers say something, they usually say something directly to the point. The Chinese attributive clause, on the contrary, often places the important information at the end of the sentence, follows the"end-weight"principle. This is also consistent with the cognitive characteristics of Chinese native speakers and the English native speakers, that is, the Chinese have concrete, dialectical and curved thinking mode, while English native speakers have abstract, logic and linear thinking mode. The similarities and differences between the English and the Chinese attributive clauses are prone to the use error, and they can cause the conflicts and misunderstanding of the meaning. In order to avoid the misuse, the learner must clearly recognize the similarities between the two languages, and then, grasp the differences. When using the attributive clauses, according to their respective characteristics, the learners should learn to be flexible in use. The study of the attributive clause can help people to master it better, only by understanding the similarities and differences of English and Chinese attributive clauses, can we avoid mistakes in translating and expressing the attributive clauses in actual use.