A Syntactic Comparison Between English And Chinese DOC

The syntactic comparison of the Double Object Construction between English and Chinese in this thesis is carried out within the framework of TG Theory and the Argument Structure. By doing so, the author aims to find out their similarities and differences. The paper explores the Double Object Construction from a number of perspectives, i.e., the definition, the classification and the working regularity. By observing many examples, the author attempts to analyze the reasons that cause the differences from a theoretical perspective. First, the previous studies are introduced, such as Chomsky's, Kayne's, ZhangBojiang's, etc. Then, the detailed theoretical basis for the thesis is given, including the X-bar theory, the movement, vp shell, c-command, the argument structure, under the framework of which the verbs of the Double Object Construction, the sentence patterns, the objects and the passives are compared. Generally speaking, the similarities are: DOC has the same typical pattern in English and Chinese-- S+V+NP1+NP2; in the DOC, the 10 is usually animate. However, there is no such restriction on the transformational forms, such as the Dative Construction in English and the sentence marked by "ba" in Chinese. The differences are: Chinese DOC has a more wide-ranging scope; Some verbs used in the Chinese DOC sentences are inherently one or two-place, but verbs used in the English DOC is at least inherently two-place, can't be one-place; some verbs bearing the same meaning can construct a DOC sentence in Chinese but not in English, and vice versa; there are differences on the form, the position and the ellipsis of the double objects; there are differences on the passive form of the DOC in both languages. At last, the author tries to explore the reasons for the similarities and the differences of DOC between the two languages and makes a further discussion on the universal character and the individual character of the language.Such illustration and comparison, although not perfect, shows that the derivation of English DOC is similar to that of Chinese, both basically in accordance with man's cognitive competence.