| This investigation,by adopting a corpus-based approach,is carried out through various quantitative and qualitative analyses on the basis of the data retrieved from the two self-built corpora-China Daily Business News Corpus and The Guardian Business News Corpus.Its purpose is to establish the frequency distributions,compare the actual uses of postmodification by to-infinitive and of-phrase in Chinese and British business news,and discuss the factors contributing to the differences.Accordingly,the findings are as followsThe similarity of the distributions of these two constructions in Chinese and British business news is the overwhelming preference for to-infinitive rather than of phrase.And factors accounting for this,most likely,associate with the fact that to-infinitive constructions,in reality,can fulfil both semantic equivalent identity and lexical completion.And what differs considerably is the reluctance to employ these two constructions in Chinese business news,which may attribute to the negative linguistic transfer on word order,the influence of the End-focus Principle and the lack of the cognition of nouns.Besides,the striking differences also manifest in that,specific to categories of nouns within the constructions,in British business news,to-infinitive has the tendency to occur after Discourse and Status categories of nouns;while in Chinese business news,it is inclined to appear after Cognition and Manner category of nouns.This may be,most likely,explained by the fact that the expression of these two constructions usually accompany different stance towards certain affairs or issues.The findings of this dissertation,on one hand,will shed light on the future exploration of the postmodification constructions;on the other hand,they will provide insights for translators or readers of business news to readily interpret to-infinitive and of-phrase postmodification constructions. |
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