Comparison between English and Chinese Negative Expressions and Their Translation 英汉否定结构的对比及其翻译.doc

英汉否定结构的对比及其翻译comparison between english and chinese negative expressions and their translationabstractnegation is universal for almost all the languages in the world, but languages differ in ways to realize negation. the forms of negation in english are complex and diverse. the form and negative meaning are almost incorresponding. however, in chinese, the negative structures are comparatively simple. and those differences of idiomatic expressions and patterns between english and chinese constitute obstacles to the understanding and translation of negation for the learners of a second language.based on contrastive linguistics, lexicology and syntactics, a comparative study of negation between english and chinese at the lexical and syntactic levels is conducted, in terms of the differences of negation, and the means of the translation of negation.lexicon concludes morphemes, words and phrases. in english negative morphemes, which are also called negative affixes, consist of prefixes and suffixes. in chinese there is no specialized negative affixes. and there are more negative words in english than in chinese, whose negative words are comparatively simple. in the process of translation, the negative morphemes or words in one language can not always be translated into fixed negative morphemes or words in another language. according to different cases, one has to adopt flexible ways to translate negative morphemes or words.through a comparative study of partial negation, full negation, double negation and transferred negation at the syntactic level, three translation methods are proposed, namely, literal translation, transformation and counter translation. key words：negative expressions, comparative study, translation methods内 容 摘 要世界上任何一种语言都有否定方式，但不同语言表达否定意义的方法各不相同。英语表达否定概念的方式具有复杂性和多样性，否定形式和否定意义几乎不对应，而汉语对否定的表达却表现出一定的单一性。同时，英语和汉语在否定表达和语言习惯等方面也存在着一定的差异，这就造成我们在理解和翻译上的困难。 以对比语言学、词汇学、句法学作为理论基础，从词汇层面和句法层面展开对英汉语言否定结构的比较，找出他们表达方式的差异, 并在此基础上指出了相应的翻译方法。词汇包括词素词语和词组。英语否定词素，即否定词缀，包括前缀和后缀，而汉语中没有专门的否定词缀。英语中否定词相对繁多，而汉语中否定词相对简单。在翻译的过程中，一种语言中的否定词缀或否定词不可能固定地翻译成另一种语言的某个否定词缀或否定词，因此必须根据不同的场合灵活地采取翻译方式。在句法层面上通过对部分否定全部否定双重否定和转移否定的对比研究，提出了利用直译转译和反译三种方法对句子作出准确的翻译。关键词： 否定结构；对比研究；翻译方法contentsintroduction11 introduction of negation21.1 overview of negation31.2 brief survey of previous studies on negation42 comparative study of negative expressions between english and chinese52.1 negative affixes in english62.2 comparative study of negative words between english and chinese72.2.1 negators72.2.2 comparative study of “not” and “不”，“no” and “没(有)”.92.3 comparison of negation at the syntactic level in english and chinese112.3.1 partial negation and full negation112.3.2 double negation142.3.3 transferred negation153 translation of english and chinese negative expressions173.1 translation of negative affixes in english173.2 translation of “not” , “no” ,“没有”,“不”183.3 translation of negative sentences in english and chinese203.3.1 translation of partial negation and full negation203.3.2 translation of double negation243.3.3 translation of transferred negation27conclusion28notes29bibliography31acknowledgements32introduction as negation plays a very important role in the communication between different languages, the study of negation has long drawn the attention of linguists who have made contributions. aristotle, a greek philosopher, is the earliest person in having studied negation, and jespersen showed that english negation can be classified as nexal negation and special negation and he has done in-depth analysis in the english language. randolph quirk, sidney greenbaum, geoffrey leech and jan svartvik expounded the grammatical rules about negation and the scope and focus of negation in detail. apart from that, laurence horn makes great contribution to the research of metalinguistic negation. he points out how to deal with the pragmatic ambiguity of negation. the chinese scholars yue xiang(岳湘), xu shenghuan(许盛桓) and zhang qingbo(张青柏) have further developed the theory put forward by quirk et al., elaborating the concepts of negation scope and focus. wang li(王力) describes the usage of negators in both contemporary and ancient chinese. l shuxiang(吕叔湘) has studied the chinese negation and the categories of assertion and interrogation. chen ping(陈平) has done some substantial work on the comparative study of negation processes in english and chinese. but the interest the researchers have displayed and the studies they have made point to the fact that negation is an inviting and valuable topic worth probing into. in terms of a contrastive study of negation and the translation between english and chinese, a few books on english-chinese studies include the topic but most of them stay at a superficial level by listing the different negative structures in english and chinese and describing how negation is translated from english to chinese. another problem concerning the contrastive study of english negation and chinese negation is that the study which has been done focuses on comparing english negation with chinese 不/没有constructions. this, however, does not take the whole picture of the english and chinese negation into consideration and cannot provide a satisfying interpretation of the similarities and dissimilarities between english and chinese in negation. and the problem concerning the translation of negation is that few people have proposed a criterion or concrete techniques to guide the translation.by viewing the research on negation done by the linguists and scholars, and based on contrastive linguistics, lexicology and syntactics, a contrastive and comparative study of negation between english and chinese is conducted. on the basis of the findings obtained from the comparative study, three methods for the translation are proposed and used. 1 introduction of negationas one of the most complex phenomenon in language, negation has been studied in disciplines such as linguistics, logic, psychology and philosophy since the times of pluto. however, most of the researches are confined to one language. with more and more frequent communications between china and western countries, the study of negation has now begun to be conducted from the cross-linguistic perspective, which will naturally include the contrastive study and the translation of negation.1.1 overview of negationnegation plays a very important role in everyday social communication in the world. the concept negation is related to logic, psychology, philosophy and scientific study of language. negation can express the concepts of non-existence, prohibition or falseness or the contrary of something positive. negation can be termed as a linguistic universal for almost all languages in the world, as asher and simpson state: “negation is a linguistic universal: for cognitive and pragmatic reasons every language must have the possibility of asserting that the state of affairs expressed by a sentence is not true.”1 logical negation is a polar system which allows one end for the false and the other for the true. in fact, a statement can only be true or be false in logic, intermediate statement between true and false does not exist. givon states: “logicians have traditionally considered negation only in terms of truth-value; that is, as an operator that reverses the truth-value of a proposition.”2 but in natural languages, negation means more than the one in the logical system. quirk, an english scholar, gives a definition to negation as “negation makes a positive statement negative.”3 and according to bloom, there are three meanings of negation: (1) nonexistence, (2) rejection, and (3) denial.4according to various viewpoints or studies, negation can be classified in many ways. in light of the relations between meaning and form, there are explicit negation and implicit negation. having an obvious mark for negation and negative forms is called explicit negation; and some surface structures are negative in meaning but affirmative in form, which is called implicit negation.aristotle distinguished contrary negation and contradictory negation in view of meaning. otto jespersen studied negative sentences and put it into general negation and special negation.for a long time, many scholars and researchers had studied negation in view of meaning and form. then some others like r. quirk, et al. classified english negation in terms of grammar, which has three typesclause negation, local negation and predication negation.5language can often be studied at three levelsthe phonological level, lexical level and syntactic level, so negation can be studied at these three levels.1.2 brief survey of previous studies on negationnegation, as an important way of sentence processing in language, has been studied by many linguists. aristotle is the first man who distinguished contrary negation and contradictory negation. jespersen pointed out long ago that english negation can be classified as nexal negation and special negation, and he has also done deep analysis of negation in the english language. randolph quirk, sidney greenbaum, geoffrey leech and jan svartvik expound the grammatical rules about negation and the scope and focus of negation in detail. their proposal of the concepts of negation scope and focus is a pioneering work, but some of their guidelines to determine negation scope have aroused heated disputes among grammarians. apart from that, laurence horn makes great contribution to the research of metalinguistic negation. he points out how to deal with the pragmatic ambiguity of negation. the chinese scholars yue xiang, xu shenghuan and zhang qingbo have further developed the theory put forward by quirk et al., elaborating the concepts of negation scope and focus. they have greatly modified quirks criterion that the parts to the left of negator fall outside the scope of negation to guide the determination of the negation scope. wang li describes the usage of negators in both contemporary and ancient chinese. lu shuxiang has studied the chinese negation and the categories of assertion and interrogation.chen ping has done some substantial work on the comparative study of negation processes in english and chinese. in his paper he differentiates the logical negation and grammatical negation and also discusses negation at different grammatical levels. zhang jin(张今), chen wenbo(陈文伯), zhang jiangyun(张江云), shi yuzhi(石毓智) and zhang jie(张杰) also make great contributions to the contrastive studies of negation in english and chinese.2 comparative study of negative expressions between english and chinesenida points out that all languages have the same capacity of expressing the world, believing there exists a common core in human experience and the way people express things.6 in other words, there are more similarities than differences in the ways people depict the real world and their inner worldthe mind. as every language has the capacity to express negative meanings, the notion of negation is regarded as universal in both english and chinese, though the expressions of negation vary from one to the other. the purpose of the present chapter is to conduct a systematic contrastive analysis of negation between english and chinese.2.1 negative affixes in englishmorpheme, the minimal significant element in lexicology, is the smallest unit of grammatical analysis, which can be divided into content morpheme, grammatical morpheme and allomorphs. grammatical morphemes, namely affixes, are segments that are added to a root or base to form new words. and the process by which words are formed by adding affixes is called affixation. in english, affixation plays a predominant role. words can be negated by adding either a prefix (at the beginning of a word) or a suffix (at the end-position of a word). negative prefixes and suffixes are frequently used, which account for a considerable proportion of the english word-formation. in general, the prefixes dont change the part of speech of the word while the suffixes frequently alter the part of speech of the base. the frequently used negative affixes in english include:prefixes: (1) non- (eg, non-smoker, non-member) (2) dis- (eg, disappear, dishonest) (3) a- ,ab-,an- (eg, abnormal, asexual) (4) in-，ir-, im-，il- (eg, inability, irregular)suffixes: (1)-less (eg, useless, wireless) (2)-free (eg, dust-free, ice-free) (3)-proof (eg, light-proof, water-proof)in chinese, there is no prefix or suffix in the strict sense. 2.2 comparative study of negative words between english and chinesethere are many negators used in english and chinese to make syntactic negation. in english, the main negators are not, no, never, none, neither, nor, without, nobody, nothing, nowhere, seldom, few, rarely, etc. in chinese, the main negators are 不，没有，别，未，无，非，etc. the form and use of negators in english are different from that in chinese. therefore, a whole introduction of negators in both languages will be firstly expressed, and then there will be a contrastive study of negators between “not” and “不”，“no” and “没(有)”. 2.2.1 negators apart from affixes, negative meanings can also be realized by negators. negators are the syntactic markers of negative sentences which express negative meanings. in both english and chinese, there exist negators. these negators are marked morphologically for negation and they follow co-occurrence restrictions that single them out as syntactically negative.in english, negators, in terms of their meanings and functions, fall into four categories, (1) general negator: not. (2) absolute negators: no, no one, nobody, nothing, nowhere, none, never, noway(s), neither, neither.nor, no more, no longer, little (not at all). (3) semi-negators: hardly, scarcely, barely, rarely, seldom, few, little. (4) additive negators: neither, nor, no more.7 in chinese, most negators have their origins in ancient chinese. nine negators from ancient chinese have been frequently used for more than two thousand years. their forms and meanings are stable. almost all negative sentences in chinese are formed by these negators. they are不、非、勿、毋、无、否、弗、未、莫. in modern chinese, three new negators 没、甭、别are added to the nine negators, and of the twelve negators，不、没(没有)、别are most commonly used.8the use of negators in english differs from that in chinese in many ways: (1) most negators in both english and chinese belong to the category of adverbs. apart from that, english negators can also be used as words of other parts of speech. such as nobody (n. or pron.), neither (pron. or adj.), neither (conj.), etc. but in chinese, negators can be verbs, such as没有(v.)、无(v.), besides being adverbs. (2) another great difference between negators in english and chinese is that english negators are semantically pure, i.e. they have only one meaning-negation. the counterparts in chinese contain not only negation, but also some other semantic meanings. for example, 没(有) (无、未) means negation plus possession or negation plus perfect tense. 不(非、弗) means negation or negation plus subjective mood (subjective desire). 别(甭、勿、莫) means negation plus imperative (persuasion and warning).2.2.2 comparative study of “not” and “不”, “no” and “没(有)”.“not” is the most frequently used as negator in english. it expresses pure negation. the chinese negator “不”, which is in widespread use, usually occurs before a verb or an adjective and negates the action or the quality.both “不” and “not” can negate verbs. but “不” can not negate the verb “有”( “有” can only be negated by “没” ); “not” of course has its own restriction: when negating a verb, “not” must follow an auxiliary unless the verb takes the non-finite forms.both “不” and “not” can negate adjectives and adverbs. the difference is that adjectives negated by “不” can function as a predicative in the sentence whereas those by “not” cannot unless the verb “be” is placed before it. for instance, 1 只有廿年以前，把古久先生的陈年流水簿子踹了一脚，古久先生很不高兴。（狂人日记）(i can think of nothing except that twenty years ago i trod on mr. gu jius old ledgers, and mr. gu jiu was most displeased.) (translated by yang hsien-yi)neither “不” nor “not” can modify nouns. but sometimes “不” can precede a noun, however, in this case the noun is converted into other parts of speech. as l shuxiang points out, “some nouns may be preceded by “不”. that is because these nouns have been converted into adjectives or verbs.”9 for example, “他也不茶不语，一言不发。” “不茶” means “did not drink tea”, “不语” means “did not speak”. “not” cannot be used in this way under any circumstances. “不” can be used to answer a question as a response; but this is not case with “not”. for instance,2 “您是这里的老师吧？” “are you the teacher here?” 3 “不，老师回家了。” “no, the teacher has gone home.” (cf. *“not, the teacher has gone home.”)according to h. poutsma, “no” is used a) as an adnominal word, b) as an adverb.10 as an adnominal word, “no” means 1) not any (eg, there is no excuse.) 2) not a, quite other than (eg, he is no fool.) 3) hardly any (eg, it took no time). as an adverb, it is used as a negative answer to a question or it is used with comparatives to express the meaning of “by no amount” or “not at all” (e.g. “no better” , “no more” etc.). “没有” sometimes just “没” is used a) as a verb; b) as an adverb. when functioning as the former, it can negate the idea of either possession or existence. when functioning as the latter, it denies that an action has taken place or a state of things exists.both “没” and “no” can negate nouns but there are still some differences. in the phrase “没水”, “没” is a verb, “水” is the object of the verb; while in “no water”, “no” is a determiner of the noun “water”. therefore “没水” is a verb phrase and it can serve as the predicative in the sentence, but “n