A Contrastive Study Of The Representations Of Path And Manner In English And Chinese Communicative Fictive Motion Events

This thesis is a contrastive study on the representations of Path and Manner in English and Chinese communicative fictive motion events (CFMEs) on the basis of parallel narrative corpus. It mainly focuses on the one hand lexical devices utilized in constructing fictive paths, different fictive path windows, and the dynamic continuum of path elaboration and path granularity. On the other hand, manner representation and manner granularity are also contrasted. Finally, the factors behind the similarities and differences in representing path and manner in CFMEs are analyzed. Major findings are as follows:(1) Communicative path verbs, Preps (prepositions) and Advs (adverbs) are mainly adopted to represent paths in English CFMEs. And communicative path verbs, Preps and DVs (directional verbs) are mainly utilized in Chinese.(2) In locative fictive paths (LFPs), Preps or Advs can represent both the dimension and conformation in English LPPs (locative prepositional phrases). However, dimension and conformation in Chinese LPPs are represented by locatives, and "zai/在" only functions as a grammatical mark.(3) In simplex fictive paths (SFPs), Preps are employed to represent as path sats in English. But Chinese SFPs could be represented by both Preps and DVs. Chinese utilizes more Preps and DVs to represent respectively the initial and final fictive path in Informer-Message-Informee SFPs and Informer-Message SFPs. More than 76.42% of English Informer-Message SFPs are represented by communicative path verbs, but only 20.39% of Chinese counterparts are realized by communicative path verbs and the remaining 79.11% are presented by CVs as path sats. English is bigger than Chinese Informer-Message-Location SFPs by nearly twice, and initial fictive paths, medial fictive paths and final fictive paths are represented. But Chinese only represents initial fictive paths and final fictive paths.(4) There are nearly five times as many CFPs in English as their Chinese counterparts. In Informer-Message-Informee CFPs and Informer-Message-Location CFPs, English has initial-final fictive paths, medial-final fictive paths and initial-medial fictive paths. However, Chinese only represents initial-final fictive paths in Informer-Message-Informee CFPs, and initial-final and medial-final fictive paths in Informer-Message-Location CFPs.(5) This study has demonstrated that fictive path granularity is quite similar in English and Chinese CFMEs with respect to the representation in LFPs, SFPs, and CFPs. But English is 3.03% higher than Chinese in path granularity in CFMEs.(6) English possesses a bigger number of fine-grained specific MoS verbs than Chinese, and also 62.15% of manner are represented by specific MoS verbs. In contrast, manner represented by specific MoS verbs only occupies 45.91% in Chinese.54.09% of manner are realized by gerundives, adverbials and prepositional phrases, filling the gap caused by independent specific MoS verbs in English and Chinese CFMEs.(7) In CFMEs, there is no significant difference in manner granularity in English and Chinese CFMEs, occupying respectively 45.36% and 54.61%. But Chinese is slightly higher than English in manner granularity on account of the manner redundancy.(8) General MoS verbs are rarely found in representing CFPs in English CFMEs. CFPs in Chinese CFMEs are mostly represented by general MoS verbs plus a Prep and a DV. But specific MoS verbs, especially those conflating loud volume and high pitch, are typically represented in the higher continuum of fictive path of CFPs in English CFMEs.The factors behind the similarities and dissimilarities are analyzed from the perspective of cognitive mechanisms, language systems and translator’s influences. Since conceptual blending and metaphor are universal to human beings, English and Chinese have similar communicative fictive motion. However, English and Chinese are diverse in representations under the control of different conceptual blending capabilities and metaphoric creativity. Contemporary Chinese has a series of directional Preps grammaticalized from verbs. When representing communication fictive motion, directional Preps and DVs can be sometimes replaced by their synonyms which also represent the initial fictive path and the final fictive path in CFMEs. It is the translator who decides the diction. And his aesthetic ability and knowledge might also influence his translating style and methods.This study will be of help for future studies on communicative events, motion events and typological studies, and lays a theoretical foundation for the translation of CFMEs.