| Punctuation, though a subordinate component of written language, is understood ashaving remarkable importance that somehow often fails to receive the attention it deserves.The study on punctuation up to date at home and abroad is mainly prescriptive, but somescholars have attempted descriptive researches by interpreting its reasonable existence andits influence on language. One of their great discoveries is that punctuation has cohesivefunctions and plays an irreplaceable role in constructing a text. Comma, being the mostfrequently used punctuation mark both in English and Chinese, seems to count for much inthese aspects. It is the biggest common feature the two languages share in their punctuationsystems, but has not been valued a lot in academic circles. There is seldom a systematicstudy on this subject. Up to now, researches have mainly focused on its prescriptive usesand the relationship of its cohesive function to a text, or to some respects of translationpractice. Then, can we get a more in-depth understanding of comma? This paper tries toreach a systematic level through textual and comparative studies of this special punctuationmark in English and Chinese. Its case study adopts a comparative analysis of some Englishand Chinese contemporary prose works, selected from the authoritative ChineseTranslators Journal, and the purpose is to demonstrate that comma is not a simple pause orsegmenting symbol alone, and it is all reasonable for us to explore, from the perspective ofcomma, some laws or properties of the two languages and texts in relation to the use of thesame punctuation mark. Eventually, some suggestions are made to the studies and practiceof translation.This research begins with an introduction of definitions of English and Chinesecomma and then carries out a classification of their prescriptive uses. A further comparative exploration into the definitions and uses concludes their similarities anddifferences, from which different laws or properties are inferred in the two languages. Thefollowing study of the relations of comma to some aspects of text is concerned with thepotential functions and implications of this subject. Firstly, comma is given a newdefinition from the cohesive point of view. This redefinition is proved to be reasonable andexpected to have different significance in both English and Chinese. Secondly, someattention goes to the textual function of comma and its relationship to textual unit. Theirdifferences between English and Chinese contribute to a discovery related to the differenttextual organizations of the two languages. Thirdly, the number of comma is figured out inthe source and target language of20pieces of English-Chinese prose and20pieces ofChinese-English prose. Besides, the way translation deals with comma reveals someaspects of the universals of translation. In the last part, a general discussion is conductedon the significant implications and research values of comma to translation studies, writing,and teaching of English and Chinese.The innovative points of this paper lie in the following results: beyond the scope ofthe prescriptive studies of comma, the perspective of cohesion provides a new approach toidentify the functions of comma, with the well-supported belief that it is a covert cohesivedevice for the construction of textual invisible network. English comma depends uponformal structural markers to realize its cohesive function, whereas Chinese comma itselfhas more profound cohesive significance. The fact that English distinguishes from Chinesein their ways of thinking and organizing a text is known to all but has never beendiscovered from the perspective of the use of comma, which helps verify the propositionthat English is hypotactic and Chinese, paratactic, and that English texts take formalorganizations and Chinese texts, semantic organizations. Furthermore, a comparativeapproach between the two languages runs throughout this thesis so that the concern aboutcomma in translation is given some theoretical support and practical basis. |
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