A Contrastive Analysis Of English And Chinese Proverbs From

Previous linguistic studies of English and Chinese proverbs in China and abroad have been mainly concerned with their specific syntactic features,with scant attention being paid to the revealing of the fundamental differences lying behind the syntactic features of the two languages,and little notice being taken of the reasons hidden beneath the superficial differences.Based on the perspective of English pro-temporality and Chinese pro-spatiality(Wang Wenbin 2013a,2013b,2019a),this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of the syntactic structures of English and Chinese proverbs by classifying them into two types:the type of complete-sentences and that of phrases,in an attempt to look deep into the essential distinction between the English and Chinese syntactic structures of proverbs,and at the same time,to fill the research gap left by the study of English pro-temporality and Chinese pro-spatiality which has not yet so far examined the proverbs of the two languages.There are three major findings presented in the paper:(1)The syntactic structures of English proverbs show that the English language has the attribute of pro-temporality:the temporal feature of complete sentences is closely related to the distribution of the predicate verb in the center of the sentence,the types of cohesive devices and the ways of how the explicit subject-predicate structures combine;and the temporal feature of phrases is intimately linked to the types of cohesive devices and the ellipsis of their subject-predicate structures,with their hierarchy of temporality in these structures dominated by verbs.(2)The syntactic structures of Chinese proverbs reveal that the Chinese language has the character of pro-spatiality:the spatial feature of complete sentences is intently associated with the primary status of nouns,the number of symmetrical syntagms and the ways of how the explicit dui-speech structures join,i.e.the ways of how the overt symmetrical syntagms are put together;and the spatial feature of phrases is highly connected with the number of noun phrases and the completeness of the dui-speech structures,with their hierarchy of spatiality in these structures dominated by nouns.(3)Rooted in the temporally coding mode of Indo-European languages,the syntactic structures of English proverbs use predicate verbs to determine temporal categories and utilize the way of verb coding to differentiate structural levels,with cohesion and continuity as their fundamental traits.However,rooted in the spatially coding mode of the Chinese language,the syntactic structures of Chinese proverbs use nouns to combine spatial characteristics and utilize the way of noun coding to distinguish structural levels,with chunkiness and discreteness as their essential traits.When discussing the interrelationships of the syntactic features of English and Chinese proverbs with the ways of thinking by the English people and the Chinese people,the present thesis adopts the perspective of English pro-temporality and Chinese pro-spatiality discussed by present researchers,borrows the notion of"inner linguistic form" advanced by Humboldt and the research fruit produced in the research area of different modes of thinking between Chinese and Westerners.As for their contrasts,English hypotaxis and Chinese parataxis directly correspond to the different concepts of Western rationality and Chinese perceptiveness,and the difference between the English subject-predicate structure and the Chinese dui-speech structure is correspondent to the distinction between the Western deductive inference and the Chinese analogic thinking.The root cause of these two discrepancies could be found in the distinction between the English people’s pro-temporal way of thinking and the Chinese people’s pro-spatial mode of thinking,which is found to accord with the notion of "inner linguistic form".