A Metafunctional Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese Abstracts And Their Corresponding English Versions

This paper contrasts the English abstracts with the Chinese from the perspective of systemic-functional grammar. The original data was treated with SPSS 11.50 and Excel 2000. The aim of the study is to find out the similarities and differences between the two versions of abstracts on the three metafunctions. The contrastive analysis follows the sequence of the general distribution of every element of metafunctions in the two versions of abstracts, the distribution of them in every abstract, the significance testing of the difference and the internal relationship between the elements of every metafunction. The source material is a corpus of 30 pairs of abstracts from six kinds of first class journals published in China. And each pair has the same topic.The analysis shows that the difference between the two versions of abstracts on the selection of process is not significant, but the tendency is that the English abstracts prefer relational process, and the Chinese abstracts prefer material process; that the differences between the two versions on the selection of modal operators and mood adjuncts are significant: in the English abstracts, more median value modal operators are adopted, whereas, in the Chinese abstracts, more high value modal operators are used, and though both of the two versions of abstracts prefer the use of mood adjuncts on the use of modal adjuncts, the number of them in the Chinese abstracts is far more than that in the English abstracts, and the number of comment adjuncts in the English is much more than that in the Chinese; that the differences on the selection of types of theme, markedness of theme are not significant, but the differences on the use of parallel pattern and linear pattern of thematic progression are significant: the number of parallel patterns of thematic progression in the Chinese version is much more than that in the English, whereas the number of linear patterns of thematic progression in the English is much more than that in the Chinese; that the differences between the two versions on the selection of reference and ellipsis are significant: the English abstracts prefer to use reference to create cohesion, whereas, the Chinese prefer the use of ellipsis. In addition to the above differences, the internal relationship between the elements of metafunctions in the English is not in accord with that in the Chinese. Obvious differences exist.Based on the above results, the implication for abstract writing and teaching is given at the end of the paper.