A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And English Multiple Wh-questions

As a basic sentence pattern of language, interrogative sentences occupy a quite important position in language studies. The study of all kinds of interrogative sentences has been given weight to by scholars at home and abroad for a long time. Multiple wh-questions, which are the object of this study, are a special sub-type of interrogative sentences and refer to a question that contains two or more wh-words. So far, there are a certain number of researches related to multiple wh-questions in a single language. Among all the studies, those with regard to Chinese multiple wh-questions mainly focus on the word hierarchy and pay attention to the phenomena such as reduplication of wh-words and so on, while those concerning English multiple wh-questions emphasize the forming mechanism, wh-movement and so on due to the influence of formal linguistics. Up to now, the study of multiple wh-questions is small in numbers, not to mention the contrastive studies between Chinese and English multiple wh-questions.Under the theoretical guidance of contrastive linguistics and cognitive linguistics, this thesis presents a tentatively contrastive study of Chinese and English multiple wh-questions. The study is carried on at two main levels, namely, syntactic and semantic ones. Similarities and differences between Chinese and English multiple wh-questions obtained from the contrasts are analyzed for the deeper cognitive motivations. On the one hand, the author insists on the integration of description and elaboration. On the other hand, the contrast-analysis research method is adopted throughout the whole study process.After a complete investigation of numerous linguistic data, the author finds out that Chinese and English multiple wh-questions share a certain amount of similarities. For example, both of them can be used to convey multiple interrogations at the same time; both of them require correspond answers organized in the way the questions do; and matching answers are acceptable in both languages and so on. Meanwhile, there exist more differences between them:English multiple wh-questions are restricted by strict wh-movement rules while Chinese ones undertake no change in word orders; single answers are also acceptable in Chinese multiple wh-questions; it is possible in Chinese that the number of multiple wh-words are not in accordance with that of interrogative focuses; Chinese multiple wh-questions can also used in a non-interrogative way to express the speaker’s subjective feelings and attitudes. The underlying reasons lie in the foundational differences between Oriental and Western thinking modes and cognitive features. Oriental thinking mode emphasizes the holistic, instinctive, fuzzy and subjective features; while western thinking mode stresses analytic, logical, precise and objective features. Therefore, compared to English ones, Chinese multiple wh-questions are more flexible in syntactic forms, more abundant in meanings and more universal in application.This thesis makes a relatively comprehensive contrastive analysis between Chinese and English multiple wh-questions on the basis of the predecessors’researches. It elaborates similarities and differences between them at syntactic and semantic levels and tries to make further analyses of the possible cognitive motivations. It is hoped that this thesis will make contributions to the contrastive studies between Chinese and English, and also offer new materials for studies of multiple wh-questions.