A Corpus-based Study Of The Language Features Of The Translated Vernacular Novels In The Late Qing Dynasty And The Early Republic Of China (1902-1917)

The late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China witnessed the rapid development in Chinese society.The old and new language systems were in dynamic change during this period.Some researchers have shown their interests in the translated novels in vernacular Chinese during this period,but there is a lack of systematic and quantitative research concerning it.Comparable corpora were built as the research tool to explore the lexical and grammatical features of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in this period.Polysystem theory and register mechanism theory were used to analyze the deep causes of the language development of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese during this period.Based on the data collected from the corpora,it is found that:Firstly,the lexis of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China presents the following features:1)eclectic;2)transitional;3)experimental and innovative.The translated novels in vernacular Chinese in this period absorbed functional words,notional words,idioms and imitated four-character patterns from classical Chinese,which increased the elegance of the language;The translated novels absorbed various proper nouns from foreign languages,which added exoticness to them;The language of translated novels absorbed erhua and colloquial words from the dialect and local language which brought fresh colloquialness to it.There existed a lot of frozen words and transitional words in the vocabulary of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in this period.There appeared many cases of word imitation and word coinage in this period.There were many fresh usages in pronouns and quantifiers.The translators in that period boldly carried out the vocabulary "experiment".Secondly,the grammar of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China presents the following features:1)Europeanization;2)incompleteness.The feature of Europeanization is formed due to the influence of the western languages with hypotaxis as their basic sentence construction;while incompleteness could be traced back to the stage of the development of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.Lastly,like the vernacular Chinese in translated novels in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,vernacular Chinese during the New Culture Movement has the similar characteristics of being formal and popular,transitional and eclectic.There appears continuity in the vernacular Chinese of the two periods in terms of word formation,the use of pronoun,the use of quantifier and Europeanization in grammar.And the vernacular Chinese during the two periods presents the same characteristics of language experiment and innovation.To summarize,the language of the translated novels in vernacular Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China absorbed a large number of useful language components from classical Chinese,oral Chinese,dialects and foreign languages,thus gradually developed into a new style of Chinse language,namely "quasi modern Chinese language".Translation played an important role in the formation of this new style of language.The practice of translating novels into vernacular Chinese during the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China laid a foundation for the development of vernacular Chinese during the New Culture Movement.