Cognitive-Linguistic Analysis Of The Passive Constructions In The Chinese Novel “Brother” By Yu Hua And Its German Translation By Ulrich Kautz Under The Theory Of Langacker’S Cognitive Grammar

The passive construction,which differs from the active form by reversing the perspective of the action,is conceptualized and linguistically realized in different ways in German and Chinese.For a long time,the focus of research has been on comparing syntactic,grammatical and translation studies,the study of the cognitive mechanisms and motivations behind these linguistic phenomena is missing.This master thesis is based on cognitive linguistics,with the aid of the theory "Cognitive Construct" by Langacker and the novel "Brother" by Yu with its translation by Kautz as a corpus,a comparison of passive constructions in German and Chinese as well as an analysis of the translation of the passive constructions from the perspective of the cognitive construct will be made.In this thesis,the German translation of Chinese passive constructions in the novel "Brother" are comprehensively collected and searched.Through the comparison,the research results indicate that although the two languages belong to two different language systems,similarities can be found in the area of syntactic structure,semantic role and pragmatic function.At the same time there are still differences between the passive constructions in these two languages.The most obvious is the way of construction of the passive forms and the emotional meaning of the passive sentences.In addition,passive constructions in the original work and the translated work present with different frequencies.Compared with Chinese passive constructions,German passive constructions present more objectivity.The comparison on the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic level serve as the basis and criteria for the research of the translation of Chinese passive constructions.Based on the above research and with the aid of the four dimensions of the cognitive construct,the cognitive mechanisms and motivations behind these language phenomena are examined.During the translation there are variations of the degree of specificity,changes of domains,addition of background information,changes of perspective,etc.This reconstruction of the passive constructions is analyzed in detail in this thesis.In this process some symmetrical and asymmetrical language phenomena can be found in these two languages.There are also some incomparability and limitations in the translation.The focus is on the translation of Chinese proverbs,translation of the cultural proper names,translation of the semantic meanings of Chinese passive constructions and the translation of certain sentence models.The novelty of this master thesis consists in applying the new approaches of cognitive grammar instead of the traditional research method of the passive constructions.This allows a bridge to be built between the cognitive construct and the translation,so that the cognitive mechanisms and motivations behind the translation can be recognized.In addition,an intercultural comparison between German and Chinese passive constructions is carried out so that new perspectives can be offered for the multilingual investigation.