A Multifunctional Contrastive Analysis And Semantic Maps Of Connectives “he” In Chinese And “and” In English

“He” and “and” are respectively one of the most frequently used multifunctional grammatical forms which express connective meanings in Mandarin Chinese and English.The main function of “he” and “and” is to indicate coordination.However,according to the corpora available,they differ in their multi-function.The multi-function of grammatical forms is not unique to any particular language,but is universal in world languages.In the same way,the similarities and differences in their multi-function can also reflect some implicational universals and differences among world languages.By comparing different grammatical forms in the same or different languages or dialects with overlapping ideographic functions,we can reveal some internal associations among different grammatical meanings.The multi-function of connectives “he” and “and”,to some extent,implies the commonality and individuality of the grammatical forms which express connective meanings in world languages.The present research seeks to reveal the associations between different functions of the grammatical forms as “he” and “and” in different languages based on the theories of lexical typology and Semantic Map Model.Adopting qualitative analysis,synchronic and contrastive analysis,the thesis collect linguistic data of connectives in 32 languages and dialects from BCC,CCL,BNC,dictionaries and reference books,and then attempt to answer three research questions:(1)What are the functions of connectives “he” and “and”?(2)What is the association between the multi-function of “he” and “and”?(3)What implicational universals and differences can be found on the basis of the semantic maps for connectives “he” and “and”?This study arrives at the following research findings:(1)“He” has two major functions: indicating “coordination”(including“N-conjunction” and “V-conjunction”)and “comitative”.“And” has only one major function,which is indicating “coordination”,and “and” cannot be used to present comitative function.In addition,“and” can indicate the duration of action and time,which is not found in the other languages or dialects.“And” can also function as a discourse marker.(2)As for the other functions of “he”,“selection”,“comparison”,“contrast” and“metaphor” are extended from “N-conjunction”;“progressive” and “successive” are extended from “V-conjunction”;“co-agent”,“target”,“association” and “source” are extended from “comitative”.(3)As for the other functions of “and”,“addition”,“comparison” and “contrast”are extended from “N-conjunction”;“progressive”,“supplement”(including“explanation”,“modification” and “limitation”),“order”,“successive”,“adversative”,“causative”,“condition” and “purpose” are extended from “V-conjunction”.(4)The conceptual space of grammatical forms which express connective meaning also contains the following function nodes: “quantity”,“existence”,“instrumental”,“manner”,“pretransitive”,“render”,“passive”,“recipient”,“beneficiary”,“maleficiary”,“direction” and “beginning”.(5)The semantic maps for “he” and “and” partially overlap with each other,and they show different evolution tendencies.Their evolution entails the association of their multi-function,and the adjacency of the function nodes reflects the similarity of the degree of grammaticalization.The world languages entail implicational universals and own peculiarities.The multifunctional contrastive analysis of “he” and “and” and the conceptual space for grammatical forms which denotes connective meanings provides not only references for Chinese to English and English to Chinese translation,dictionary compilation,and the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language,but also inspirations for us to better reveal the mystery of languages.