The Influence Of Translational Language On Modern Chinese Change-a Case Study Of "A-de-AN" Structure

This study investigates the influence of translational language on Modern Chinese in the process of language change. Since 1940 s, the phenomenon of Language Contact(LC) has received considerable attention by many researchers such as Weinreich(1953), Thomason and Kaufman(1988) and so forth. LC involves not only direct LC but also indirect LC. Recent research indicates that direct LC causes language change in the field of phonology, lexicon, syntax and pragmatics of linguistics, while little research has been done about the influence caused by indirect LC. Translational language is regarded as a kind of indirect language, abundant in our daily life. The author therefore asked “Whether translational Chinese has an influence on Modern Chinese language change?”In order to answer the question, as part of effort, the author uses corpus data,hoping to explore inter-relations between translational Chinese and Modern Chinese.To be more specific, the case chosen for study is “A-de-AN” structure, coming from the comparable corpus — DECPC(Diachronic English-Chinese Parrallel Corpus).Through analysis of the Log-likelihood of “A-de-AN” structure, we discover the significance of data in OCC 1919-1930(original Chinese sub-corpus between 1919 and 1930s) compared with those in OCC-1911(original Chinese sub-corpus before1911). In other words, there is a sudden change in the expression of “A-de-AN”structure around 1930 s, which can not derive from internal factors of language change.In that period, translational texts flooded into China after the May 4th Movement, thus the most influential factor is probably to be translational language. Therefore, it is hypothesized that “A-de-AN” structure in Modern Chinese is affected by translational Chinese. In analysis of results, theories about semantic field, componential analysis,collocations are used to give plausible explanations.Three distinct findings are concluded from data gathered in this research. The first major finding indicates that “A-de-AN” structure in Modern Chinese has gone through changes since 1919 from the perspective of semantic collocations. The second finding suggests that influence of translational language on Modern Chinese starts and reaches the summit during 1919-1930 s. In the period of 1950-1965, the influence drops dramastically. Since 1990 s, it keeps a stable influence. In sum, there are nine sub types of semantic collocation influenced by translational language at different periods but only one of them has been reserved in Modern Chinese, which isthe type of “[character]+de+[action]”. We have to admit that although the influence takes place, the effect to Chinese language change is quite limited. Lastly,translational Chinese language is not as normalized as what Baker(1996) has predicted. Instead it is very “creative” in semantic collocations for the amount of collocational types is much larger in translational corpora than those in original ones.