A Comparative Study Of English COMP And Chinese COMP

Complementizer, first proposed by Rosenbaum in1960, belongs to FunctionalCategory. It refers to words that introduce complement clauses in languages likeEnglish and thus this is the origin of its name. So far many linguists have takeninterested in Complementizer including Chomsky, Radford, Matthew, etc. Eventhough their researches have enriched our knowledge of Complementizer, the contrastof COMP in English and Chinese is still under discussion. Studies of this field are stilllimited. Based on the previous studies, this thesis tries to compare Complementizersin English and Chinese and find the causes of the differences.The author found through her studies that Complementizers of English andChinese have common features. For examples, Complementizer can introduce definiteand indefinite clauses, though there are also clear differences. First, theComplementizer in English always occupies the head position, to follow the behaviorof English as the head-first language, while although considered a head-first language,Chinese complementizer does not occupy the head position in the clause. Thissuggests further studies of comparison study for this problem. Second, the omission ofthe complementizer in both languages is different, as C can be omitted in objectiveclause in English but not in Chinese. These differences in the paradigm of UniversalGrammar prompt us to the challenge of new research in this area.The paper consists of five chapters as follows: Chapter One introduces thebackground knowledge of Complementizer at the same time raises the research scope,research purpose and the key problems planned to solve. Chapter Two is the literaturereview. In this chapter, firstly, the previous study on complementizer at home andabroad is introduced, hoping to be helpful for a further research of complementizercomparison, including the proposal, components and syntactic position of English andChinese COMP. What’s more, it introduces the previous studies of the correspondingrelationship of COMP in these two languages. Secondly, in order to make a comparison between complementizers in English and Chinese, Complementizer isintroduced in detail, including the definition, and the syntactic characteristics ofcomplementizer. Moreover, the main form of Chinese COMP structure and theconcept of Chinese clause are brought in so as to make a comparison. Chapter Threeis about the theoretical basis and research methodology. In this chapter, X-bar theoryis introduced and the methods taken in this thesis including contrast, comparison andhypothesis testing approach are present in detail. Chapter Four is the main part of thethesis which reveals the corresponding relationship between English and Chinesecomplementizers, and expounds the intrinsic difference of Chinese complementizerand English complementizer through the position comparison of each other. The lastchapter is the conclusion of the thesis.