A Contrastive Study Of Lexicalization Patterns And Degrees Of Lexicalization In English And Chinese Verb Category "Hit"

Guided by Talmy’s lexicalization pattern theories and Componential Analysis, this paper makes a contrastive study on lexicalization patterns and degree of lexicalization between English and Chinese "Hit" verbs.In the first place, this paper focuses on one of the motion event verbs-"hit" verbs,89English "hit" verbs and108Chinese ones are collected from Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms, The Oxford Thesaurus-An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms, Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th) and some websites such as www.merriam-webster.com and www.iciba.com. Secondly, each word’s nuclear meaning "hit" and peripheral meaning such as "tool, sound, and cause" are listed through componential analysis. Thirdly, each word’s lexicalization pattern "motion+manner+vigor+X" is listed in tables. Finally, the author concludes both languages’lexicalization patterns. Then, both synthetic and analytic analyses of those words are made and contrasted to study the differences in degree of lexicalization between Chinese and English "hit" verbs. This paper presents as identical corresponding counterparts as possible of each language to see which language prefers the synthetic expression or the opposite.Results show that there are universals and particulars between the "hit" verbs. The key semantic component "hit" determines the semantic field of the word and the peripheral components differentiate synonyms. In the meantime, the author modifies Talmy’s lexicalization pattern "Motion+Manner" for motion events and carries out a more specific pattern "Motion+Manner (Cause)+Objective+Vigor+X" for both English and Chinese "hit" verbs and X is an integer bigger than or equals to zero, which can distinguish subtle semantic components between words. As for the degree of lexicalization,30%English "hit" verbs have to express meaning by over one Chinese word while23%Chinese "hit" verbs have to express meaning by over one English word. Hence, English is prone to use more synthetic expressions. Besides, English "hit" verbs’having a high proportion of verbalization, more monophormic words and some other differences from culture, language use and so forth lead to English’s higher degree of lexicalization.