The Contrastive Study Of The Semantic Components Of Cutting And Breaking Verbs In English And Chinese

The separation verb, or more specifically, Cutting or Breaking verb, is an important part or type of event verbs and plays a significant role in the study of Semantics and Syntax both in Chinese and English. This type of verb is used to describe daily events involving separation or destruction in the material integrity of objects. In the framework of cognitive semantics and based on theories suc h as semantic field theory, componential analysis and lexicalization, this paper makes a detailed contrastive study of the semantic components of Chinese and English Cutting and Breaking verbs in order to gain insight of the similarities and differences be tween them, and whether there exist differences compared to the classification of Guerssel et al.(1985) as well as the reasons behind those differences and similarities.At first, during the preparation work, large quantities of sentences or usages about Cutting and Breaking verbs are collected. Based on the proposal of Guerssel et al.(1985) and Semantic-Component Model Analysis, the semantic components of several verbs are analyzed in detail. Through the contrastive study of semantic components of English and Chinese Cutting and Breaking verbs, we find that the semantic components of English Cutting and Breaking verbs basically conform to the proposal of Guerssel et al.(1985), but also have their uniqueness. For example, almost all Cutting and Breaking verbs in English and Chinese have wider extensions, and English verbs, in general, are of a higher degree of lexicalization than the Chinese ones. That‘s to say, English Cutting and Breaking verbs contain more semantic components than their corresponding on es in Chinese in that they can describe integrated separation events, instead of just Cutting or Breaking sub-events which are separately described by Chinese single-morpheme verbs. Besides, this finding also shows that the universally-accepted proposal of Guerssel et al.(1985) may reveal the commonality or universality of most languages, but differences or uniqueness do exist in certain languages, for example, the semantic features may vary with cultures and languages. Thus as for our learners, we should make a concrete analysis of each specific question, and it‘s important for us to notice the peculiarities of languages and take them into consideration. In the last two chapters, the paper explores the relationship between language and thought, and makes the conclusion that language is rooted in and shaped by human cognition by discussing the motivations behind these similarities and differences of verbs ‘ semantic components.Generally speaking, this study gives a clear and comprehensive description of semantic components of Cutting and Breaking verbs both in English and Chinese, so that the differences and similarities are also accordingly clarified, which makes this study significant theoretically and practically. On one hand, it sets a good example for contrastive studies of semantic components of words in English and Chinese; on the other hand, our findings contributes to the translation of Cutting and Breaking verbs in both English and Chinese...