A Contrastive Study Of Word Order Between English Words In Pairs And Chinese Coordinate Compound Words From The Iconicity Perspective

In the past,the contrastive study of English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words mainly focused on word-formation,grammar and word-meanings,and only a few articles related to the contrastive study of the word order.The study of the similarities and differences of word order between the two types of words enables people to understand deeply the combination rules between the two languages and promote the learning and understanding of foreign languages.However,the previous study of word order often ignores the constraints of cognition on word order,resulting in the ambiguity of the interpretation of the word order in some respects.Moreover,most studies only explain the reasons of these similarities and differences of word order between the two types of words from the internal structure of the language,so there is no breakthrough in the research perspective.But the development of cognitive linguistics provides a new perspective for us to compare the word order of the two kinds of words,and the development of cognitive theories also provides us with more research methods.The way of thinking behind the words can help us to explain the reasons for the word order.The iconicity means that the language structure is similar to the human experience structure or conceptual structure,which closely links thinking with reality,so the iconicity theory conforms to the development trend of English-Chinese language contrastive research from structure to thinking,and it is more suitable to guide the contrastive study of word order between English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words.There is a high similarity in cognition between native Chinese speakers and native English speakers,therefore,their mode of thinking is similar in many aspects,which can be embodied in the language structure,so the iconicity theory can explain the similarities of the word order between English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words in a relatively comprehensive way.Due to social factors,cultural factors,and even the impact of speech,the word order of English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words will be affected inevitably.Therefore,in addition to using the iconicity theory to explain thesimilarities and differences of the word order between the two types of words,we have to take into account the impacts of the above factors on the similarities and differences of the word order,especially the impact of culture on word order.This paper mainly studies the reasons for the similarities and differences of word order between English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words,and attempts to explain these reasons from the perspective of cognition.However,it can be seen from the above that it is not sufficient to explain these reasons just from the perspective of cognition.So we should consider the influence of cultural factors on the similarities and differences of the word order in particular.This paper first compares the word order of English words in pairs and Chinese coordinate compound words in order to find out the similarities and differences between them,and observes and analyzes the causes of the similarities and differences of the word order between the two types of words.Then it tries to explain these reasons from the principles of iconicity,such as the principle of sequence iconicity,the principle of markedness iconicity and the principle of conventional cultural iconicity,which also verifies that the differences and similarities of the word order are largely influenced by cognitive and cultural factors.