A Contrastive Study On Theme And Thematic Progression Patterns In Narrative Proses Between English And Chinese

As a kind of proses, narrative prose is a form of writing which tells a specific story through actions.Although it is one of the simplest types of writing to understand, this does not mean that these stories areinherently simplistic. Conversely, very complex and detailed stories are crafted using this format. It hascompelling and rich characters. It has become a necessary part of people’s communication. With the rapiddevelopment of Halliday’s Thematic Theory and patterns of Thematic Progression proposed by bothdomestic and overseas scholars, many Chinese scholars show great interest in contrastive analysis ofChinese and English texts. In recent years, there are great numbers of studies between the two differentlanguages. However, very few people have carried out the comparison of narrative proses between Englishand Chinese.According to the specific features of English and Chinese narrative proses, this study, based on theTheme-Rheme Theory proposed by M.A.K.Halliday, the representative of Systemic Functional Linguistics,and on the Thematic progression patterns, proposed by scholars at home and abroad, concludes four TPpatterns as the basis of the present study.In order to achieve the research goals, this thesis designs three questions:(1) What are thedistributions of theme and thematic progression patterns in both English and Chinese narrative proses?(2)What are the differences and similarities in the choice of the types of theme and TP patterns in English andChinese narrative proses?(3) What may cause these differences and similarities of Chinese and English TPpatterns in narrative proses?This study randomly selects10original English narrative proses from The Most Beautiful Prose in theWorld by Professor Xu Hanlin and10original Chinese narrative proses from Selected Modern ChineseEssays3by Professor Zhang Peiji as the corpus of the present study. According to these statistics, thisthesis carries on a contrastive analysis of Theme and TP patterns between English and Chinese texts,intending to find the similarities as well as differences between English and Chinese Thematic ProgressionPatterns in narrative proses, and more importantly, the causes that lead to the differences between Englishand Chinese Thematic Structure and Thematic Progression Patterns in narrative proses. The research findings mainly are:(1) There are different distribution features in the choice of Themeand Thematic Progression Patterns. The simple theme occupies the most percentage in both English andChinese narrative proses. The clausal theme is far more often used in Chinese narrative prose than inEnglish ones.(2) In English narrative proses the frequency sequence of the TP patterns is: parallel pattern≥concentrated model＞linear model＞non-specific pattern＞crossing pattern; in Chinese narrative prosesthe sequence in order is: concentrated＞non-specific＞linear＞parallel＞crossing.(3) English and Chinesebelong to different language families: English focuses on meaning while Chinese is heavy on form. Thetwo nations have different thinking mode which can also produce the differences in the choice of thematicstructure.Five chapters constitute this thesis:Chapter One introduces the present research from the whole aspect. The research background,research significance, research objectives and the organization of the thesis are concerned about in thischapter.Chapter Two concerns about the literature review, mainly dealing with the previous related studies onTheme, Rheme and thematic progression patterns at home and abroad. The classification of Themeproposed by Halliday that is simple Theme, multiple Theme and clausal Theme is presented too. What’smore, the logical semantic relations will be clearly presentedChapter Three is mainly concerned about the research questions, data selection and sampling, researchmethod and procedures of the thesis.Chapter Four is the main body of this research, which focuses on the data analysis and discussion.Firstly, through the review of thematic progression patterns proposed by scholars at home and abroad, thisresearch concludes four TP patterns (parallel, linear, crossing and concentrated) upon which the presentstudy is based. Secondly, two English and two Chinese samples are analyzed sentence by sentence. Then, itgives out the distribution of different types of Theme in English and Chinese narrative prose and thestatistic results of four patterns distributed in English and Chinese narrative prose. Finally, the similaritiesand dissimilarities of Theme, Rheme and thematic progression patterns in English and Chinese narrativeproses are stated. Besides, it discusses the main causes that result in the similarities and differences.Chapter Five is the conclusion of this thesis. It makes a summary of the major findings, presents the implications and limitations of the research. Additionally, this chapter also covers suggestions for furtherstudy.Generally, this study can be helpful for the learners to master the skills in English and Chinesenarrative essay writing and translation. The study of Theme and TP patterns between the two languagesmay have a certain influence on other students and also provide a new light to the study and analysis ofnarrative proses.