The Comparison Of English And Chinese Compound Words' Motivation

There are many different viewpoints on motivation , the main stream of them is that motivation can be divided into extra-motivation and intra-motivation , and more attention is paid to the intra-motivation , that is the motivation of words . The drawback of this viewpoint is that it takes the two kinds of motivations as isolated and having no relations . The reason is that we apply the western motivation mechanically and are not aware of the difference of the English and Chinese motivation . On the basis of the predecessors' study , we give a clear classification to the types of motivation and try to find the relationship between them by analyzing the compound words . Motivation can be divided into yizhi motivation and syntagmatic motivation ; the yizhi motivation is of primary importance and determines the syntagmatic motivation . Yizhi motivation is the relationship between the signifier and the signified , which includes the natural relationship iconicity and humanistic relationship-motive ; the object and imagery in thisdissertation are the yizhi motivation fearures of compound words and they are the corresponding reflection of iconicity and motive in lexicon . Syntagmatic motivation is the relationship between the signifiers , mainly referring to the grammatical and semantic relations , and it is the way to realize yizhi motivation .There are six sections in this dissertation . The first part is the introduction part , in which the connotation of motivation theory and the status quo of the comparative motivation study of English and Chinese compound words are stated clearly ; Chapter one is mainly about the definition and classification of the motivation of compound words . They are transparent and opaque motivation . Basing on this standard , the dissertation gives a detailed analysis to the 400English words and 400 Chinese words by using the methods of statistics , exemplification , comparison , etc and has a conclusion that transparent motivation is the main type in English , occupies about 78.5% , and the limit between the transparent motivation and opaque motivation is very clear ; the opaque motivation is the main type in Chinese , occupies about 57% , the limit between the transparent motivation and opaque motivation is vague. Chaper 2 and Chapter 3 give a detailed description of the object , grammatical, imagery and semantic features of the English and Chinese compound words' motivation respectively and the correspondence between them . Object , imagery , grammatical , semantic features are the four features of the compound words' motivation , and they all exist in English and Chinese with the only difference that English lays particular emphasis on the object and grammatical features , while Chinese lays particular emphasis on the imagery and semantic features . Chapter4 and the last part is the conclusion of the whole dissertation and the significance of this study.In a word , the creative point of this dissertation is that we classify the motivation in a new way . We divide motivation into yizhi motivation and syntagmatic motivation and put the emphasis on the relationship between them , and the difference of English and Chinese motivation. This new visual angle can not only do a bit to help the theoretical study , but also be an aid to the teaching of compound words .