A Contrastive Study On Chinese And Russian Onomatopoeic Words

Onomatopoeic words are found in majority of languages in the world.Onomatopoeia is a special type of language,its origin,characteristics,structure,significance,grammatical role is vera specific.Onomatopoeic words are important part of vocabulary.The lexis of this type is widely represented in Chinese and Russian languages.Understanding the differences and similarities between Chinese and Russian onomatopoeia can be helpful in improving language speaking and comprehension skills.This study can also be guidance in a field of Chinese-Russian translation of onomatopoeic expressions.Although Chinese and Russian onomatopoeias are frequently used and its sphere of application is wide;there are not many comprehensive researchers on onomatopoeic words,especially comparative analysis of Chinese-Russian onomatopoeia.Therefore comparative study of onomatopoeic words is a very important area of research.Thus we carry out a contrastive study on Chinese and Russian onomatopoeic words based on literature survey,corpus analysis and auditory sensation survey.First chapter introduces previous Chinese and Russian researches of onomatopoeia and gives an overview on such problems as definition,scope,functions,and features of onomatopoeia.The aim,methods of research and structure of research paper is also introduced in this chapter.The second chapter contains a comparative analysis of phonetic structures of Chinese and Russian onomatopoeic words.Rhythm occurred to be the main feature of Chinese and Russian onomatopoeia.According to the corpus analysis,Chinese and Russian reduplicated onomatopoeia application rate is higher than monosyllabic ones.Although Chinese and Russian language phonetic systems are very different,onomatopoeic words in these two languages have seven equivalent phonetical structures.Chapter three describes word formation ability of Chinese and Russian onomatopoeia.Chinese onomatopoeias have more ways of producing new words,than Russian ones.There are eight types of onomatopoeia word formation ways in Chinese,Russian ones can only use transposition and affixation for this aim.However Russian onomatopoeias can create a tremendous number of new words through affixation.Chapter four describes difference and similarity of Chinese and Russian onomatopoeias from the point of view of their syntactic function.They all can serve as subject,predicate,object or independent element of a sentence.Chinese onomatopoeic words have a special syntax function serving as attribute,adverbial modifier or complement.Chinese and Russian onomatopoeia stylistic functions are compared in chapter five.As one of stylistic devices,onomatopoeias of both languages are widely used in spoken language and literature for creating a unique aesthetic effect.The stylistic analysis results show that Chinese onomatopoeias have specific functions: can act as metaphors of abstract things and create synesthetic effect.A specific stylistic feature of Russian onomatopoeias consists in that new onomatopoeias can be created randomly in order to help author to emphasize features of the subject.Chapter six illustrates monosyllabic and complex onomatopoeias' auditory sensation survey results.The survey has found out some speech perception features,connected with onomatopoeia,of speakers of different languages.Chapter seven is a summary of previous chapters;also it points out weak points of research and states problems for future research in this field of study.