| The language used in Honglou Meng is a typical representative of the interim from Contemporary Chinese to Modern Chinese, which symbolizes the threshold of modern Chinese. However, few people have done the research on Honglou Meng from the perspective of linguistics, thus, there is necessity and possibility for us to step further."Bi"sentence, as a representative of comparative sentences, has been paid close attention to in the field of grammar. There are more than 400"Bi"sentences in Honglou Meng, however, systemic and comprehensive study can hardly be found, the study of which can help us to understand the development of"Bi"sentence of modern Chinese. The translation study of Honglou Meng has been unfailing since the 1970s, but it mainly focuses on the cultural factors in translation. The comparative study of"Bi"sentence can help us to further interpret the characteristics of Chinese and second language acquisition.In this thesis, we build a corpus of"Bi"sentence in Honglou Meng by virtue of modern computer technology, and then, by adopting both qualitative and quantitative approaches we make an exhaustive study to describe the use of"Bi"sentence in Honglou Meng comprehensively and probe into the characteristics of this pattern at syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic planes. Moreover, we make a comparative analysis of the translation of"Bi"sentence by adopting the theories and methodologies in contrastive linguistics.The entire thesis falls into three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. Chapter one is the introduction, which illustrates the significance of the research, the status quo of relevant study, and theories and methods adopted in this thesis.The body of the thesis divides into five chapters. In chapter two, we analyze and classify the use of"Bi"sentence in Honglou Meng, and fix on the range of study . Based on the established corpus of"Bi"sentence, we make an exhausted analysis and description of the pattern in terms of the Three- plane Theory from chapter three to chapter five, which is the major research of this thesis, and we summarize the characteristics of"Bi"sentence in this period. In chapter three, we analyze the syntactic structure, type, and the construction function of"Bi"phrase; in chapter four, we discuss the syntactic type and the asymmetry phenomenon of the comparative items; in chapter five, we probe into the pragmatic distribution, ellipsis, and it negative form of"Bi"sentence. Chapter six is a comparative study in terms of comparative linguistic theories and methodologies, which covers the structure of the English translation of"Bi"sentence and the correspondence between original Chinese and English translation. Chapter seven is the conclusion of the thesis. Based on the characteristics of"Bi"sentence inHonglou Meng, we sum up the development of"Bi"sentence in modern Chinese; the comparison between English and Chinese structure of"Bi"sentence being the basis, we explore the translation of"Bi"sentence, problems that should be paid attention to in language acquisition. Finally, we point out the inadequacy of this thesis and direction for future research. |
