Research On Chinese Serial Verb Constructions And Their English Translation Pattern From Typological Perspective

On the basis of two modern Chinese novels and their corresponding English translations,the thesis probes into the overall distribution of Chinese Serial Verb Constructions(SVCs),the distribution of semantic subcategories of Chinese SVCs and the syntactic means in the English translations applied to produce the same semantic functions as Chinese SVC does.On the basis of the study on Chinese and English corpus,the thesis tries to explain the data out of the corpus with the respect to previous academic researches on the semantic functions,the grammaticalization and the inventory prominence of SVCs.The thesis firstly defines Chinese SVC and classifies its semantic subcategories in accordance with the earlier researches.The investigation on the novels shows the distribution patterns of Chinese SVCs in the thesis.1.There is relatively high occurrence of SVCs in both two novels.2.The semantic categories that make up large proportions(?10%)in the total population of Chinese SVCs are State-Action type,Direction-Action type and Sequential Actions type.3.Chinese SVCs in the corpus demonstrate bipolarity over the semantic categories,i.e.both the Sequential Action type with the strongest temporal iconicity and the Mode-Action type with the weakest iconicity occupy a large proportion of tokens.In the Chinese novels,the inventory prominence of Chinese SVCs is manifested in the diversity of its semantic functions and syntactic distribution,its powerful productivity and its high occurrence rate.The investigation on the corresponding syntactic structures to Chinese SVCs in English translations tells: 1.Chinese SVCs correspond to diversified syntactic structures in English translation.2.Chinese SVCs tend to be translated into simple clauses or subordination constructions.As for specific semantic categories of Chinese SVC,their translation strategies are manifested as: 1.Sequential Action SVCs are prone to be translated into coordinate constructions.2.Direction-Action SVCs,especially the“qu(?)-VP”,have a stronger correlation with the sole verb phrases.3.The Location-Action SVCs and the Instrument-Action SVCs are more likely to be translated into the Construction VP-NP.With respect to the previous studies,the thesis assumes that the difference among the translation strategies of Chinese SVC subcategories is partially produced by two typological factors,i.e.the proximity of semantic functions between Chinese SVCs and English relevant syntactic structures and the prominence of English syntactic structure;the investigation on the translation strategies of Chinese SVC can also justify the obligatory application and the grammaticalization tendency of Chinese SVC to some extent.