对比语言学论文

Reference Contrast in Chinese and English T extName: 常首鸣Code: 2008142Class: 08级外应2班Abstract: Reference is one of the most important grammatical devices for cohesion of text. It is a kind of semantic relationship, which indicates that certain items in text can be retrieved from elsewhere. Reference in both Chinese and English languages can be divided into personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference. However, there are distinctive features in the manipulation of references in these two languages, i.e., more personal and demonstrative references are used in English while more zero-references and repetitions of words in Chinese, which corresponds to the fact that Chinese demonstrates paratactic prominence while English hypotactic prominence.Key words: reference; cohesion of text; contrastive analysis1．IntroductionAccording to Halliday and Hasan’s theory of the textual cohesion, reference belongsto the grammatical devices for cohesion. They point that in a text some words, instead of being interpreted semantically in their own right, make reference to something else for their interpretatio n；that is to say, reference, as a semanitc relation, serves as a point where the interpretation of a component in the text is dependent upon that of another. From the perspective of pragmatic function, Halliday and Hasan categorize reference into two types：exophora and endophor. The former means that the interpretation of some element in the text is not to be found in the text at all, but in the situation, and the latter is just the opposite situation of the former；and endophor could be further divided into two sub-types：cataphora—indicating that the presupposed element should be somewhere in an earlier sentence, and anaphora—meaning that the element would be found in the following sentence. Therefore reference is the interpretative relations between the object and its referent within the inter-sentential structure.According to Halliday and Hasan’s theory, there are three types of reference：personal, demonstrative, and comparative, among which the first two are the major type. The paper will contrast the three cohesive devices in Chinese and English text respectively.2．Personal referencePersonal reference is realised by personal pronoun（such as I, you, he she, they him her them,and so on）, possessive determiner（your, his, her, their）,and possessive pronoun（mine, his hers, theirs）；while in Chinese reference relation is established by personal pronoun（他，她，他们）. In language use, presonal reference is the third person pronoun, the third person possessive determiner, and the third possessive pronoun. Although in Chinese and English there are two different personal systems which can not correspond each other precisely, the two systems function almost alike in cohesion. However their differences can be observed in the following aspects：（1）Expression and FormMost English personal pronouns use “gender”, “number”, and “case”to express diffferent forms；but oral Chinese adopts “ta”as all the third person forms, the pronunciation indicating no differences between gender, people and object, human and non-human, and in written form the three chinese characters —“他”、“她”、“它”were coined after “the May Fourth”Movement, and when added numeral or a Chinese character “们”after the three characters, their plural forms are realised respectively. In English personal pronoun has three case forms：subjective case, objective case, and possessive case；and Chinese personal pronoun has no case changes, and its possessive case is achieved by adding Chinese character “的”after the corresponding personal pronoun form.（2）Reflexive PronounThis is the major difference between Chinese and English in personal reference. Chinese personal form “自己”（self）includes both MYSELF and YOURSELF （singual form）and so on. It could be used as reference alone, having the independent reference function. On the country, English reflexive, such as MYSELF and TOURSELF and so on, must appear together with the corresponding personal pronoun, or be put a preposition before it. For examples ：[1a] 我高兴得放声大笑。

自己知道这是一次真正的精神解放。

[1b] I happily laughed a hearty laugh. I knew it was real relief of mind.In [1b], “myself”can not be used alone, and even“I…myself”is strongly suggested not to used here.（3）There is no relative pronoun in Chinese. It is where Chinese is different from English. Therefore in many Chinese texts personal pronoun can be expressed in the English translation by the corresponding relative pronoun. Here are some examples：[2a] “I have had such a nice time,”said Carrie, when it was all over and they were coming out.“Yes，indeed,”added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that a battle had been fought and his defenses weakened.（Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie）[2b] “今晚我过得很愉快。