A Contrastive Study Of Semantic Components And Lexicalization Of English And Chinese “Write” Type Verbs

There exists a plethora of “write” type verbs in both the English and Chinese languages,and they share the common semantic feature: the action of producing words and images on a certain medium,or other actions that involve recording and transmitting information.In light of Talmy’s theories on lexicalization pattern and Componential Analysis,this thesis presents a contrastive study on the lexicalization patterns and degrees of lexicalization between the English and Chinese “write” type verbs.To conduct this research,seven dictionaries in English and Chinese were fully used,including English Thesaurus Dictionary,Longman Advanced Contemporary English Dictionary,A Thesaurus of Modern Chinese and Modern Chinese Verb Classification Dictionary.A total of 115 verbs with the core meaning of “write” were found in mentioned-above dictionaries,comprising of 46 English verbs and 69 Chinese verbs.The peripheral semantic components of these verbs were identified by analyzing their definitions and by using semantic field theory.Subsequently,these components were subjected to componential analysis and categorized into different semantic fields.Finally,the distribution of semantic components(core and peripheral)and their lexicalization(lexicalization degree and lexicalization pattern)were contrasted between English and Chinese “write” type verbs.The study reveals that there are notable differences between English and Chinese“write” type verbs in terms of semantic components.Specifically,Chinese verbs attaches great importance to the peripheral semantic component of Manner,with 80%of Chinese “write” type verbs encoding Manner compared to only 56.5% in English.On the contrary,English verbs are richer in terms of peripheral semantic component of Instrument,with only 8.6% of the “write” type verbs in Chinese encoding Instrument compared to 28% in English.As for lexicalization pattern,the research discovers the pattern of English and Chinese “write” type verbs is the same,both being “Motion+Manner/Cause+X”.From the perspective of the degree of lexicalization,In English,there are 16 monomorphemic words and 27 derivative words,accounting for 35% and 58.7% of the total respectively.These types of words has a higher degree of lexicalization.Conversely,in Chinese,there are only 17 monomorphemic words,accounting for 24.6%,and 75.4% are compound words.Compound words have clear semantic components,but their degree of lexicalization is relatively low.Although English and Chinese “write” verbs share the core meaning,they differ in terms of peripheral semantic components and their distribution.Moreover,the lexicalization patterns of both languages’ “write” type verbs are similar,encoding Motion,Manner/Cause,and other semantic components.Thirdly,the degree of lexicalization of English “write” type verbs is higher than that of Chinese.This research provides a reference for the study of lexicalization in English and Chinese and the contrastive analysis of semantics.