A Contrastive Study Of Comparative Correlative Constructions In English And Chinese

The present research, devoted to a contrastive study of "The Xer the Yer" and "Yue X yue Y" constructions in English and Chinese Comparative Correlatives, will be conducted from the cognitive perspective within the theoretical framework of Constuction Grammar and Mental Spaces in cognitive linguistics. Methodologically, the present study is conducted by means of an integration of quantitative and qualitative analyses.Nowadays the researches on "The Xer the Yer" and "Yue X yue Y" have drawn the attention of the scholars both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, the contrastive studies between ECC and CCC are rare, it is necessary to conduct a contrastive study of ECC and CCC from a cognitive perspective.Syntactically, the two constructions both include two dependent clauses in which C1 is a subordinate clause and C2 a main one, besides, they have paired lexical markers like "the+-er" and "yue". However, the markers ("the+-er") in "The Xer the Yer" construction have several allomorphs and need to move to the beginning of each clause while these don't occur in " Yue X yue Y". The Chinese comparative correlative of comparative bi is often acceptable in " Yue X yue Y", but the insertion of "than" in""The Xer the Yer" will lead to ungrammaticity. As a result, the thesis gives a comparatively detailed explanation focusing on these matters.Following Construction Grammar Theory, any linguistic pattern can be viewed as a construction if some aspect of its form or function can not be predicted from its individual constituent. The sentence meaning not only derives from the lexical meaning of each word, but also from the construction itself. On the basis of these, the thesis assumes "The Xer the Yer" and "Yue X yue Y" are two constructions bearing their construction meaning respectively as well as the lexical meaning that their componets have. They have conditionality meaning, causation meaning and comparison meaning neither deriving from a general compositional process nor do they come from conversational implication, but mainly depending on their constructional meaning. On the other hand, within the framework of Mental Spaces, the construction meanings are integrated in the blended space by different organizing frameworks, thus forming the emergent structure. Conceptual blending exists not only between the "Input Space 1" (source domain) and the "Input Space 2" (target domain), but also throughout the whole process of semantic construction, and conducts from different perspectives and in a dynamic way.By these comparisons and contrasts, we conclude that the two comparative correlative constructions in English and Chinese can, to a great extent, reflect the intimate relationship between language structures and cognition, and best represent the mental process. The conclusion we draw is that the comparative correlative constructions, despite different features in English and Chinese, are products of human cognition, not suggested by formal linguists that varied surface structures derived from one deep structure by movement. Through this contrastive study, we can get a clear and full understanding of the comparative correlative constructions in English and Chinese. And the research will undoubtedly shed more light on language acquisition and translation for both English and Chinese learners.