On Chinese And English Negation Based On Two Novels

Negation, as a common linguistic form, has attracted much attention. Many scholars have made studies of the negative words in English and Chinese, but most of them concentrated on the scope of negation, negative center, sentential negation and partial negation. And many translators focused on the translation skills of negation. Few scholars have done researches on why there are more negative words and forms in English and why they are used more frequently than in Chinese? This thesis mainly focuses on this issue based on a comparative study of two novels, one in English and the other in Chinese.Corpus linguistics as a new research tool can help researchers to do language research work in a much easier and more objective way, and provide them with more reliable and useful information.Based on corpus linguistics, this thesis analyzed the negative words and forms in the English novel Pride and Prejudice by the famous English female writer Jane Austin and the Chinese novel Moment in Peking by the distinguished Chinese linguist and writer Lin Yutang, and found out that there are some significant differences between the two languages in the use of negation. It seems obvious that English negative forms are more various and their use is much more frequent than their counterparts in Chinese.This thesis argues that this linguistic phenomenon lies in the English tradition, especially its individualism centered culture. Chapters Five and Six give detailed analysis of various factors which have made great contributions to the forming of British culture and value system, among which, British geographical features seem to have plaid a key role, as a country’s economy is determined mainly by its natural environment, and its economy can, in turn, shape a country’s culture. The core culture of a country is usually its value system. This is one of the most important theories of human geography. Such kind of culture enables the British to express their views more directly, and say "no", when they have different opinions from others, more easily.This kind of analysis is also in consistency with the discussion of low-context culture and high-context culture. In the high-context culture, there are many internalized meanings and information, and little is shown on the paper or in the conversation. But in the low-context culture, there is not so much internalized information; when people write or communicate with one another, they explain their ideas explicitly. Britain is just one of those low-culture countries.