A Contrastive Study Of The Spatial And Temporal Differences Between Chinese And English Syntactic Structures—Based On Chinese Run-on Sentences And Their English Translation

From the viewpoint that the Chinese language is of spatiality and the English of temporality(Wang Wenbin 2013a,2013b),and on the basis of the new definition produced by Wang Wenbin and Zhao Chaoyong(2016,2017a,2017b)of Chinese run-on sentences,this thesis adopts the approaches of both speculation and exemplification to further analyze the syntactic features of Chinese run-on sentences and conduct a more detailed structural classification of them.Besides,by comparing their English translation,this thesis attempts to reveal the intrinsic differences between Chinese and English syntactic structures being instantiated by Chinese run-on sentences.There are four conclusions the present study has arrived at(1)Chinese run-on sentences,as a kind of complex sentences composed of various chunks,mainly demonstrate the following two basic characteristics.Firstly,the constitution and combination of chunks show the features of diversity and flexibility.Secondly,the subjects of chunks could be either explicit or implicit,and assume the trait of cross-indentification.(2)The diversity of constitution means that there are not only subject-predicate clauses which are generally complete in terms of syntactic structures,but also a variety of phrases that could make direct components of chunks,and these two types of chunks often go together frequently in a Chinese run-on sentence.Moreover,the flexibility of combination refers to the rather loose structural relation of different chunks,between which there is few,if not none,explicit connective devices used.(3)The subjects of chunks could be either explicit or implicit as mentioned above,and their cross-identification can usually be found in the following two syntactic dimensions:the first one is the source place,or the original syntactic place where the implicit subjects are identified,coming from either the chunks preceding them or the ones that follow,or with the both directions involved;and the second one is the source component,which means that the implicit subjects may be identical to various syntactic components of other chunks,such as their subjects,objects,attributives,etc..(4)In terms of the identification of implicit subjects,as well as the different types of source components,the present paper classifies Chinese run-on sentences into two major structural types,namely,homo-identification run-on sentences and hetero-identification ones.Homo-identification run-on sentences mean that the subjects of chunks,which are often implicit,all belong to the same type of syntactic component,and they could be further sub-divided into homo-identification of subjects,homo-identification of objects and homo-identification of attributives,etc.,while hetero-identification run-on sentences refer to the type of sentences whose implicit subjects belong to two or more types of syntactic components,which on the whole reveal the properties of cross-indentification.With the above-mentioned analysis of Chinese run-on sentences and the contrastive study of Chinese and English syntactic constructions,this thesis holds that the root cause of the crucial discrepancy between these two languages could be ascribed to the Chinese people's preference for space and the English people's emphasis on time.Therefore,in translation from Chinese into English,the distinctive features of Chinese spatiality should be transformed into English hypotactic structures in order to maintain the characteristics of English temporality.