Theme And Thematic Patterns In Chinese And English Narrative Proses

Thematic structure (Fheme+Rheme) can be taken as a configuration of clausal structure. It is sensible to make the analysis of clauses from the perspective of Thematic structure. Clauses have textual organizing functions, and the configuration of Thematic Progression has connections with the genre of a discourse. Thematic Progression (TP) and the relationship between Theme and Rheme have become the main areas of study in discourse analysis. And the different TP Patterns can help understand the logical and coherent flow of information in a text.With the development of Theme-Rheme Theory at home and broad, research on contrastive analysis of Chinese and English texts also attracts many Chinese scholars. In recent years, there exists abundant and profound studies between the two languages, but very little analysis has been carried out in the comparison of narrative proses between English and Chinese.The aim of this study is to make a contrastive study of English and Chinese proses from the perspective of Thematic theory to see whether there are any similarities and differences concerning Theme distribution and TP Patterning.The corpus for this study is made up of20English and20Chinese narrative proses selected from Anthology of Chinese and English Proses published by Yilin Press. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data, the author has found out the existence of all six TP Patterns in both languages and the similarities and differences in Thematic distribution and configuration of TP Patterns. Based on the findings, Theme distribution of the translation should be consistent with that of the original as much as possible. The thesis proves that the knowledge of the thematic structure play a significant role in translation. In addition, this study of TP Patterning can help readers better understand the information flow of narrative proses. It proves that the configuration of TP Patterns can decide the genre of proses. This thesis consists of five chapters.In chapter1, the background of the study is given. Besides, significance of the study, organization of the thesis is also introduced.In Chapter2, some relevant definitions are illustrated, such as Theme and Rheme, Given and New. Besides, it provides a brief overview of the researches on TP Patterns carried out both abroad and at home. Based on other scholars’models, we classify TP Patterns into the following6types:Parallel, Continuous, Concentrated, Alternative, Derived and Combined. Finally, the significance of thematic progression to contrastive studies between Chinese and English is discussed.Chapter3introduces the research methodology, including research questions,data collection and research procedure.Chapter4presents a TP Pattern analysis of the40narrative proses chosen from Anthology of Chinese and English Proses, aiming to find out the similarities and differences in the frequency of use of different TP Patterns in Chinese and English narrative proses. This analysis is based on the theoretical framework of the6Patterns talked above. The author makes an attempt to interpret the similarities and differences between the use of TP Patterns in Chinese and English narrative proses. The results show that narrative proses in both Chinese and English use Parallel, Continuous, and Concentrated Patterns more frequently. And there exists more Unmarked than Marked both in English and Chinese proses. There are a number of differences in the use of theme and in the distribution of different TP Patterns in Chinese and English narrative proses. It also provides the interpretation of the findings.Chapter5discusses the theoretical significance and practical implications of the study. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are also presented in this chapter.This study can help readers better understand the information flow of narrative proses, and provide some guidance for the narrative proses translators to make necessary rearrangements in sentence Patterns or information focus according to the similarities and differences of narrative proses in English or Chinese in terms of thematic progression. The analytical framework established in this study may also be used as a frame of reference in the studies on TP Patterns in other genres.Despite the limitations in this study, the findings of this thesis will be beneficial to the contrastive study of English and Chinese narrative essay writing and translation. The author hopes that the analytical framework established in this study may also be used as a frame of reference in the studies on TP Patterns in other genres.