A Comparison Of Verbal Nominalization In English And Chinese And Its Implications For Translation

Nominalization, a salient feature of human languages, refers to the incongruent realization of a process or attribute as a thing. From the perspective of morphology, it is manifested as the transference of a verb or adjective into a noun. Philosophers and linguists have carried out research in such respects as the nature, the functions and the forms of nominalization in English since the 1920s. Studies of the Systemic-functional linguists represent the acme of these endeavors. Chinese scholars paid no attention to nominalization until the 1950s and the subject has remained one of much debate ever since owing to the absence of morphological markers in Chinese and certain pending issues concerning word classes.On the basis of all previous studies on nominalization, this thesis proposes a three-dimensional analysis to the functions of verbal nominalization: the building of technical language at the semantic level, the achieving of cohesion at the textual level, and the realization of such stylistic values as conciseness, objectiveness. In both English and Chinese, the forms of verbal nominalization are various, which this present thesis attempts to explain in the light of the prototype theory. All forms of nominalization can be reckoned as members of the category NOMINALIZATION, differing in typicality (i.e., the goodness of example).In translation of nominalization, it is vital to grasp the event structure which remains intact despite the changes at the morphological and syntactic levels. This thesis proposes means of translation on the basis of a systematic comparison of the different forms of nominalization in English and Chinese.