A Study On English Translation Of Antonymous Compounds In Yu Hua’s Novel Brothers Based On Construction Coercion

Antonymous compounds in Chinese are formed as an interesting word-formation and are usually made up of two antonymous morphemes. Many scholars have studied this item from the aspect of classification and formation feature of them. This thesis tries to discuss the English translation of antonymous in Chinese from the aspect of Construction Coercion.This thesis aims to expand the scope of the former study on the level of morpheme, and to study the translation of Chinese antonymous compounds, based on Construction Coercion, a theory stem from Construction Grammar.The author establishes a closed corpus based on the English version of Yu Hua’s novel Brothers and finishes an exhaustive collection on 273 antonymous compounds from The Modern Chinese Dictionary. The author also proposes four types of translation skills after the classification and discussion of 29 typical antonymous compounds from 63 sentences listed.This thesis starts with the background, the significance of the study, and lists three research questions on feasibility, explanative power and translation strategies, which are followed by the layout of the thesis. Then it comes to be the literature review of this study, which is generally summarize the definition of complementary antonym, polar antonym, reversed antonym and an evaluation of previous study on it. Following is the theoretical foundation of this thesis, which contains the overall review on the theory of construction, relating to the birth and development of Construction Grammar, and the contents and advantages of construction. The definition of Construction Coercion is also displayed in this chapter. The core of the thesis is the principal dissertation. On the basis of an exhaustive enumeration of 273 antonymous compounds from the Modern Chinese Dictionary. With the 63 examples of the English translation of 29 Chinese antonymous compounds in the book of Brothers, the author summarizes four kinds of construction change. They are antonym to juxtaposition, antonym to the selection, antonym to consolidation and shift. Following the above, the author lists some useful and practical techniques based on the earlier analysis. The last part is the conclusion part which summarizes the entire thesis and pays attention to the limitation and study in the future.