A Study Of Nominalization In English Major Students’ Chinese-english Translation

Nominalization is a universal phenomenon in human languages, which plays an important rolein enhancing the expressiveness of articles. Since Jespersen (1924) listed the study ofnominalization into grammar framework, many linguists have made studies and discussions onnominalization from different perspectives, and have established series of relevant theories.According to Halliday (2000:352),“nominalizing is the single most powerful resource for creatinggrammatical metaphor. By this device, processes and properties are reworded metaphorically asnouns; instead of functioning in the clause as Process or Attribute, they function as Thing in thenominal group.”Based on the theory of systemic-functional linguistics, the thesis mainly explores thedistributions and functions of nominalization in English major students’ C-E translation from theperspective of grammatical metaphor. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this studyanswers four research questions:1. What are the distributions and functions of nominalization inEnglish major students’ C-E translation?2. What is the relationship between the English proficiencyand the use of nominalization in C-E translation?3. Is there any significant difference between malestudents and female students in the use of nominalization in C-E translation?4. Is there anyrelationship between the frequencies of nominalization used in C-E translation of different genres?According to Quirk’s morphological classification of lexical nominalization, the thesis studiesthe distributions of de-verbal nominalizations ending with9de-verbal suffixes like-tion,-ment,-sion,-ure,-ance,-ence,-ism,-al, and–age, and de-adjectival nominalizations ending with11de-adjectival suffixes, such as-ity,-ty,-ness,-th,-ance,-ence,-ency,-acy,-dom,-ship and–hood inEnglish major students’ C-E translation. The research results show that in English major students’C-E translation, there are more de-verbal nominalizations than de-adjectival nominalizations. As forde-verbal nominalizations, those ending with the suffix–tion occupy the largest proportion, and inde-adjectival nominalizations, the most frequently used are those ending with the suffix–ity.Generally speaking, students with high English proficiency tend to use more lexical nominalizationsand there exists a significant difference between the overall frequencies of nominalization used bystudents with high English proficiency and low English proficiency. However, in terms of thespecific distributions of de-verbal nominalizations and de-adjectival nominalizations, students inhigh score group and low score group have their different preferences. There is no significantdifference between male students and female students in the use of nominalization though thefrequency of nominalization used by male students is a bit higher. In addition, the frequency of nominalization makes a big difference between the fiction translation and non-fiction translation,and more nominalizations are used in non-fiction translation due to the functions of nominalization.The study can help foreign language learners to learn the functions of nominalization and therelationship between the frequency of nominalization and translation quality. This research is ofcertain significance in second language acquisition and translation teaching.