A Contrastive Study On The Lexicalization Patterns And Event Integration Of Motion Events

This thesis,framed mainly in Talmy’s Typology Theory and Bohnemeyer’s Macro-Event Property Theory and based on Jin Yong’s Shediao Yingxiong Zhuan and its English version compares the lexicalization patterns and event integration between English and Chinese expression of motion events,and applies the results of the comparison in analyzing the translation of Lu Xun’s novels.Firstly,a quantitative study of the semantic fineness of manner verbs suggests that English is rich in manner verbs and displays a higher lexicalization degree,while Chinese has a comparatively smaller repertoire of manner verbs and shows a lower lexicalization degree.The Chinese language tends to use serial-verb structure to convey manner information.Alternative expressions of manner,adverbs in particular,are used in English and Chinese,and the frequency in Chinese is higher than that in English.A quantitative study of path verbs suggests that Chinese has a larger number of path verbs;some directional verbs in Chinese can occur alone as main verbs to express motion events.In contrast,English satellites need to follow the main verbs to encode motion events.Secondly,a study on the segmentation of motion events suggests that English and Chinese show a certain similarity in the combinations of departure event,passing event and arrival event;when expressing the[Ground]elements,English allows one manner-of-motion verb to package multiple[Ground]elements,while Chinese need to introduce each[Ground]element by a separate verb;in terms of the combination method of Macro-Event Property expression,the most typical combinations in English and Chinese are not the same,and the frequency of[Ground]and[Figure]in English is significantly higher than that of Chinese;in terms of typological attribution,English is a typical satellite-framed language,while Chinese exhibits the characteristics of an equipollently-framed language.Finally,this thesis uses the parallel corpus of Lu Xun’s novels in English and Chinese to discuss how to accurately understand the rhetorical style and habitual expression and how to faithfully encode information in Chinese-English translation.From the perspective of lexical encoding,it is a common phenomenon that English and Chinese use alternative expressions to encode information,including adverbs,adverbial phrases,onomatopoeia,prepositional phrases,and descriptions.Chinese uses alternative expressions more frequently.Considering salience and backgrounding,English is a high-manner-salient language,and the lexicon of manner verbs in Chinese is not as large as that of English.Thus,non-comparable structure encoding of information should be considered in translation to avoid deviations in information communication.From the perspective of syntactic-level encoding,English and Chinese show differences in the continuous use of prepositions and prepositional phrases.In English,the continuous use of prepositions is a highly productive structure and tends to highlight the path,thus the dynamics of motion events should be considered.