《英汉语言文化比较》讲义第1讲语言与文化概述1.The relationship between language and culture.Language and culture are inseparably intertwined.(1) Language is a part of culture.(2) Language is a manifestation of culture. (Culture manifests itself both in patterns of language and thought, and in forms of activity and behavior.)(3) Language is the stimulus of culture (A flourished language can promote the development of culture.)2.English speakers are good at abstract thinking while the Chinese are aptto think in terms of images.3.English speakers prefer analytical thinking while the Chinese prefercomprehensive thinking.4.English speakers think more in a linear way while the Chinese think moreor less in a curving way.5.According to Whorf hypothesis, “The language that an individual speaksfacilitates particular ways of thinking.”第2讲英汉语发展简史11.Based on morphological classification (形态分类法), English belongs toinflected language (屈折语), while Chinese belongs to isolating language (孤立语).2.Based on structural classification (结构分类法), both English and Chinesebelong to analytic language (分析语).3.Based on genetic classification (谱系分类法), English belongs toIndo-European Language Family, and Chinese belongs to Sino-Tibetan Language Family.4.English is a West Germanic (西日耳曼语支) language that originated fromthe Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders.5.English is a phoneme language (表音文字) and Chinese is an ideographiclanguage (表意文字).6.The first people in England about whose language we have definiteknowledge are the Celts.7.After the Norman Conquest, English entered the period of Middle English.8.The period from 450 to 1150 is known as Old English. From 1150 to 1500the language is known as Middle English. The language since 1500 is called Modern English (1500-1700, early Modern English, 1700 until now, later Modern English).9.The main differences between Chinese words and English words: a)Letters in English are like strokes in Chinese. b) Morphemes in English are like radicals in Chinese. c) Chinese associative compounds (会意字) are like English compound words.第3讲英汉语发展简史21.Chinese and most related languages share features that make them unlikemost Western languages: They are monosyllabic, have even less inflection than English, and are tonal.2.In Chinese, a syllabic structure has three essential components: initials(声母), finals (韵母), and tones (声调). Chinese pinyin system has 21 initial consonants, 36 final vowels and 4 tones.3.According to Xu Shen’s (许慎) research, Chinese characters can be dividedinto six groups: 1) Pictographs (≈4%) 象形; 2) Ideographs (≈1%) 指事; 3) Logical Aggregates (≈13%) 会意; 4) Phonetic Complexes (≈82%) 形声; 5) Associative Transformations (a small portion) 转注; 6) Borrowings (a small portion) 假借.第4讲英汉语构词法1.Word formation in English:1)Compounding (合成法): T wo or more words are joined together toform a new word. (For example: home + work →homework)2)Prefixation (前缀法): Prefixation is the formation of new words byadding prefixes to stems. Prefixes do not generally change the word-class of the stem but only modify its meaning. (For example:Pejorative prefixes (贬义前缀): mal-, pseudo-, mis-, ill-).3)Suffixation (后缀法): Suffixation is the formation of new words byadding suffixes to stems. Unlike prefixes which primarily change the meaning of the stem, the primary function of suffixes is to change the grammatical function of stems.4)Conversion (转化法): Conversion is a word-formation whereby a wordof a certain word-class is shifted into a word of another without the addition of an affix. It is also called zero derivation (零位派生). (For example: 1) Problems snowballed by the hour. 2) Sandwich the two bread halves together and cut into 1-inch-wide slices.)5)Shortening (缩略法)6)Blending (拼缀法): Blending is a process of word-formation in which anew word is formed by combining parts of two words. The result of such a process is called a blend. Blending is a process of both compounding and abbreviation. For example, smog (smoke＋fog).7)Back-formation (逆成法): a process of word-formation by which aword is created by the deletion of a supposed suffix. It is also known as a reverse derivation.8)Eponyms9)T oponyms2.Word formation in Chinese:1)The overwhelming majority of the Old-Chinese morphemes aremono-syllabic.2)61% of the 3,000 most commonly used Chinese words are disyllabic.3)Chinese prefixes mostly involve morphemes such as 老, 小, 第, and初.4)Some so-called Chinese suffixes are added as a way of nominalization,like 度, 性, etc.第5讲英汉词语的文化涵比较11.In Chinese, the word xīn (心) that primarily denotes the heart organ mayalso refer to the “organ for thinking”and the “seat of thought and emotions”.2.In contrast, according to the Western view, heart is seen as the center ofemotions/feelings and the head (the locus of the brain with which the mind is associated) as the center of thought.3.Based on the metaphor “heart as a physical entity”, the following wordsare formed in Chinese: 心房, 心窝, 心田, 心地, and 心弦.4.Research proves that if a language only has two color words, they must beblack and white; if the language has the third color word, it must be red;if it has the fourth one, it must be yellow or green.第6讲英汉词语的文化涵比较21.Dog has a negative connotation in “a dog in the manger”.2.Traditionally, people have talked about “fixed expressions”, stressing thefixedness of these expressions, but corpus studies have shown that many of the phrases can actually be varied.3.An idiom is a fixed or semi-fixed expression whose meaning cannot bededuced from its parts. But very few idioms are 100% fixed.第7讲英语抽象名词和汉语具体名词1.The plural forms of abstract English nouns often have the function ofconcretization, for example, ratings, attractions and breakdowns.第8讲形合与意合1.Hypotaxis (形合): The dependent or subordinate relationship of clauseswith connectives. For example: It was cold because the snows came.2.Parataxis (意合): The arranging of clauses or phrases without connectivesshowing the relations between them. For example: It was cold; the snows came.第9讲英汉句法比较1. A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax toemphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. Chinese is considered to be a topic-prominent language, where the topic of the sentence takes precedence in the sentence.2. A subject-prominent language (e.g. English) is a language in which thegrammatical units of subject and predicate (S V) are basic to thestructure of sentences and in which sentences usually have subject-predicate structure.第10讲英语被动句和汉语主动句1.English uses far more passive sentences than Chinese./ Passive voicesentences are more common in English than in Chinese.2.Many sentences in English have inanimate/impersonal subjects (无灵主语),while Chinese use this pattern less frequently. For example, “The thick carpet on the corridor killed the sound of my footsteps.”第11讲语篇对比11.According to Halliday and Hasan, collocation is “cohesion that is achievedthrough the association of lexical items that regularly co-occur”. The association is achieved when the lexical items have a tendency to appear in similar lexical environments or when they are related lexicosemantically.2.a) This is a fine hall you have here. I’m proud to be lecturing in it.(Reference)b) This is a fine hall you have here. I’ve never lectured in a finer one.(Substitution)c) This is a fine hall you have here. I’ve never lectured in a finer. (Ellipsis)第12讲语篇对比21.The normal pattern to develop an English paragraph: topic sentence (mainpoint/ central thought) – supporting details.第13讲隐喻、文化和世界观1.Sports metaphors are used by all Americans, regardless of class,professions, race, age or gender. The reasons are as follows:1)Most Americans believe competition to be one quality that has madeAmerica great.2)“Being the best” American mentality has often turned everyday lifeinto a sport game. People compete in almost everything.3)American schools are another contributing factor to the Americansports mania. In many schools, athletics outweighs all other programsin terms of money and attention received.4)As a country, from the national to the local level, Americans go out oftheir way to honor athletes.2.The literal use of 吃includes 吃面, 吃饭. (not吃惊, 吃香, 吃官司, 吃败仗). The literal use of 吃饭includes 吃冷饭. (not 吃干饭, 吃闲饭, 吃软饭)第14讲基于语料库的英汉语比较与翻译考察1.Corpus (pl. corpora or corpuses): a collection of text, now usually inmachine-readable form and compiled to be representative of a particular kind of language and often provided with some kind of annotation.2.Parallel corpus is most useful for translation studies.第15讲个人主义与集体主义1.Highly individualistic cultures include the U.S., Australia, Great Britain,Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Italy. Some examples of collectivist cultures include India, Japan and China.Short Answer Questions:1.What are the different types of transliterations (音译)? Give theChinese borrowings from English as examples.Answer: The first type is phonetic loans: 摩登、咖啡、咖喱、巧克力、克隆。
