A Contrastive Study Of Logical Semantic Relations In Narratives As Realized By So And Then In English And Suoyi And Ranhou In Chinese

Discourse connectives are regarded as the main linguistic device for the writer to guidethe reader’s inference toward the texts. The reader’s interpretation of the logical flow of thediscourse is largely based on the use of discourse connectives. They play an important role inachieving the smooth and successful exchange between the writer and the reader. There are alot of similarities and differences between English and Chinese discourse connectives insyntax, lexical meaning and logical linkage.So and then in English and suoyi（所以）and ranhou（然后）in Chinese are frequentlyused in narrative discourses and have a highly multifunctional nature. My primary concern inthis research is to explore the occurrences, distributions and functions of discourseconnectives so and then in English and suoyi and ranhou in Chinese narrative discourses.They are examined in terms of the main logical semantic relations identified among clausesand clause complexes. This is significant in analyzing the styles and features of English andChinese narrative discourses.One hundred flash fictions were purposely selected from native English writers andChinese writers so as to ensure the quality of the language written in the texts. The paper firstinvestigated the occurrences and positions of so, suoyi, then and ranhou in narrativediscourses. Then the logical semantic relations realized by the connectives were explored, aswell as their functions. Finally, similarities and differences of the roles of the two pairs ofdiscourse connectives were discussed.The findings of the study firstly indicate that the core meaning of so, suoyi, then andranhou in narrative discourses is to mark continuation in context. Secondly,“so” and “then”are more flexible and pervasive in English narrative discourse than “suoyi” and “ranhou” inChinese. Thirdly, discourse connectives constrain the reader’s choice of context for theinterpretation.This research not only adds valuable analysis to the literature of discourse connectives,but also has some implications about effective way of English learning. Teachers shouldprovide as many authentic materials as possible and guide students to pay attention to theusage of discourse connectives in materials. Thus, students would be able to interpret how thewriter conveys message and arranges discourse logically.