A Contrastive Study Of Fictive Motion Event Of Access Paths In English And Chinese

This thesis makes a contrastive study on the Fictive Motion Event of Access Paths between English and Chinese on the basis of some English and Chinese works and their translations.It aims at finding out the similarities and differences between the two languages while expressing the six elements.This thesis makes the contrastive study mainly from Figure,Path,Manner,Motion,Ground,Duration and Distance.And then it explores the motivations behind these similarities and differences from the perspective of cognition,including conceptual blending theory and gestalt theory,cognitive embodiment and language system.The main findings are as follows:(1)English and Chinese have the same categories of Figures:the real moving entities and the foci of attention.And also both English and Chinese tend to omit Figures in FMEs.(2)Both English and Chinese Fictive Motion Event of Access Path are subject to Path Condition,which means that Path information is a must when expressing Fictive Motion Event.(3)English and Chinese are subject to Manner Condition,that is,Manner information is restricted in FMEs,unless it conveys Path information.(4)In addition to Sats,Preps and Path verbs,both English and Chinese can use Duration and Distance to encode Path information.The use of Distance has no restriction in these two languages,because it is quite objective.However,Duration can only be used when there are concrete moving verbs except the phenomenon that the speaker and the Figure both know the manner of moving.(5)With regard to Figure,compared with Chinese,English has a higher preference for real moving entities as Figures.And also it finds that Chinese is more likely to omit Figures.(6)With respect to Path and Manner,it finds that in English Fictive Motion Event of Access Path,Path information is encoded with Sats.However,in Chinese ones,the Path information can be encoded with Path verbs,directional verbs and Preps.Meanwhile,it points out that Manner verbs in English take up a higher percentage than those in Chinese.(7)Finally,it explores the motivations behind these similarities and differences from the perspective of cognition,cognitive embodiment and language system.Both languages are subject to the general cognitive rules,and illustrate the world on the basis of people’s daily experience.And these explain the similarities between the two languages.However,from the perspective of language system,there are some differences in the encoding of Manner and Path information between English and Chinese.English has more Manner verbs appear in the Fictive Motion Event of Access Path.And while encoding Path information,English tend to use satellites,while Chinese has a higher preference for directional verbs.The findings of this thesis can help the studies of FMEoAP,ME and language typology,and it will also provide a basis for later translation.