从汉英语言的形态、句法及语义差异对比分析中西思维模式

1、A Contrastive Study of Sino-Western ThinkingPatterns from the Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Differences between Chinese and English Languages.IntroductionLanguages are symbolic systems of both pronunciation and meaning in peoples communications, while thinking patterns refer to some function

2、s of brains that reflect humans understanding of objective world indirectly. However, they have intimate relationship with each other and are considered to be an inseparable unit. Just as Edward Sapir, the famous American linguist said, Language, when considered to be a structure, is a formation of

3、thinking pattern interior.Thinking patterns are usually concerned to be peoples thinking customs. Different societies take shape to distinctive cultures which give people different understanding and comprehension of objective world. Then, thinking patterns that are formed diversely can be shown in d

4、ifferent language forms. Karl Puliblam has pointed out in Contradiction of Thinking Patterns that the reasons of mutual communicative failure among different nationalities lie in both linguistic diversity of pronunciation, syntax, structure as well as divergences of Sino-Western thinking patterns.Al

5、ong with the historical development of society, both the Chinese and Western people have formed their distinctive thinking patterns and languages. These differences might be difficult to be realized several centuries ago, but under the influence of globalization, they have no choice but to get in to

6、uch with each other. Therefore, knowing differences of Sino-Western thinking patterns and the two languages, learners can not only understand their own features and improve the ability of using them, but also help facilitate the communication between Chinese and Westerners.While peoples thinking is

7、invisible and inexpressible, the language itself is able to explain ones thought. Thus language is always considered to be representation of thinking mode. According to modern linguistic theory, linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language. And this thesis is going to analyze

8、 the differences between thinking patterns from linguistic aspect. Sino-Western Thinking Patterns from Morphological DifferencesMorphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed. Chinese character is a typical kind of writing system that belon

9、gs to pictographs, but English word is composed of a series of morphemes that have their respective meanings. Therefore, Chinese people can tell the meaning of a character by its entire shape. And westerners usually understand a word from meanings of its morphemes.2.1 Morphological Differences betwe

10、en Chinese and English Words2.1.1 Pictographs in ChinesePictographs that always drawn by simple lines make people connect the pattern with real object, and understand the thing represented by the word. The formation of Chinese character depends on image. Therefore, the meaning of a character can be

11、imagined by its pattern. Chinese characters originated from pictographs, and developed directly from original pictures. As a result of the similarity between the pattern and the object, one of the most important features of Chinese characters is directness. E.g. the character “山” (mountain) in Chine

12、se is extremely similar with the appearance of a real mountain. Along with the evolution of Chinese characters, the directness has turned to be something inside, but it does exist. A big amount of characters which have been used nowadays belong to pictographs that have a history of more than three t

13、housand years. Even in modern patterns, they still have some extremely large and powerful strength.Besides, Chinese characters are often one syllable words and each character represents one object. Basically, pictograph is often an imitation of natural object. Such as “日” (sun), “月” (moon), “川” (str

14、eam), “火”(fire), “田”(field) are all direct reflections of nature. Pictographs can always express their own meanings excellently, so people can tell the differences of words easily. For example, the Chinese character “人”(man) represents the image of a person who is standing; and the four dots in “雨”(

15、rain) indicate raindrops. In a word, Chinese characters belong to meaning-oriented system, the character pattern and its meaning have a clear connection. The more one analyzes the character pattern, the more he will understand the meaning.2.1.2 Ideograms in EnglishEnglish belongs to one of the weste

16、rn alphabet languages, Indo-European language system which combines both the letter and pronunciation to record things. There are totally 26 alphabets in English, each of them have their own specific pronunciation in different situations. All the western alphabet languages came from Phoenician langu

17、age, which developed and altered for a long time before it turned to be Italian, French, Spanish, English and other language versions.The relationship between word and meaning in English is arbitrary and conventional. Words pattern and its reference do not have any direct or natural connection but o

18、ne kind of compulsory standard, which is obviously quite different from the Chinese characters. In contrast to Chinese words “人” (man) and “雨” (rain), the English versions of “man” and “rain” have nothing to do with the image of someone who is standing or raindrops.In addition, the pattern of words

19、in alphabetic languages like English and Russian are always determined by its pronunciation. Therefore, even one might not understand a strange word; he can still give the correct pronunciation, which is almost impossible in Chinese. Besides, English word is always composed of morphemes. E.g. the wo

20、rd “bilingual” is consist of two morphemes “bi” and “lingual”, the former one means “two” while the later one has the idea of “language”, thus the word “bilingual” means two languages. It can be concluded that the Chinese characters and the English alphabets have a different choice of word formation

21、 from the beginning.2.2 Contrast of Sino-Western Thinking Patterns2.2.1 Chinese Imagery and Comprehensive ThinkingChinese people usually pay more attention to how to express abstract concepts by imagery method. Compared with pure abstract thinking, they used to choose concrete and detail words to sh

22、ow a feeling of brightness, reality, directness and vividness.Moreover, different from westerners analytic thinking pattern, Chinese people prefer the comprehensive thinking. They are good at connecting different parts, including their nature, features and similarities into a whole one. Generally sp

23、eaking, Chinese people have a preference for comprehensiveness and keep the concept of wholism first in thinking. Take the expression of date for example; it always goes the year-month-day style in China. Similarly, when it comes to write ones name, people always do it from the family name to first

24、name. They have been using this thinking mode for thousands of years.Chinese people tend to choose one persons idea to solve a problem efficiently on account that different people have different ideas towards the same situation. As the emperor of each dynasty is the autocrat in feudal society, compa

25、red with other countries, China has a much longer history of feudalism. Chinese people seldom consider one thing for one time, theyd like to find the connection between one thing and another, then take some good experience from previous happenings and solve the present one. Take the Chinese medicine

26、 as an example, Chinese traditional medicalist never cure a certain disease of a patient when he is sick but find the root of the patients illness before making him or her recovered slowly under painstaking recuperation. Thanks to the long history of China, Chinese people did get a great quantity of

27、 answers and help from it.2.2.2 Westerners Abstract and Analytic ThinkingUnder the influence of western regional, cultural tradition and its long history, British and American people prefer to express a concrete object with abstract concepts. They are really good at applying their abstract thinking

28、to analyze things. Thus, there are a lot of abstract words in English vocabulary, such as attitude, value, claim, command, infinite, law, revise, which give people a feeling of emptiness, generality and concealment.In contrast to Chinese peoples imagery thinking, westerners use abstract thinking mor

29、e. They are willing to divide a whole thing into several parts and analyze each ones independent role and interrelationship. For example, people in west countries would never ask each other “Have you had you meal?” They have a quite clear distinction of words among breakfast, lunch and supper. Thus,

30、 people always ask this question according to the time of a day. And they would rather prefer a new wordbrunch (breakfast & lunch) instead of choosing a covering expression. In addition, thanks to their analytic thinking, it is clear that air is composed of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and several oth

31、er rare gases.Besides, people in west like to cooperate with each other towards the same situation. It is the same with their attitude to the composition of English words; every part of a word has its own role, what they can do is just perfect it with their greatest effort. Westerners take emphasis

32、on the separation between material and spirit, human and nature; they deliberate on a certain process, demonstrate carefully and give a result correspond to logic. All in all, the strict and accurate analytic thinking is a most important feature of western philosophy, which directly leads to the dev

33、elopment of western rationalism.Although word is the smallest composition of language, it can still show peoples thinking patterns of different regions. Consequently, the imagery and comprehensive thinking mode of Chinese people and the abstract and analytic thinking way of westerners can be shown a

34、ccordingly. Sino-Western Thinking Patterns from Syntactic DifferencesSyntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. Compared with the systematical grammar of English, Chinese does not have a strict rule of

35、 the word order in its sentence. Although there may be no subjects in several sentences of a chapter, Chinese people can still learn the whole meaning correctly with the help of the interrelation of each sentence. On the contrary, English sentences could not be understood if the structure is incompl

36、ete.3.1 Syntactic Differences between Chinese and English3.1.1 Parataxis and Coherence in ChineseChinese does not have very strict rules of grammar in sentences, or the consistence between subject and predicate. But it is full of variety, complex and flexibility that turns out to be parataxis. Besid

37、es, Chinese language attaches importance to logic sequence, function and meaning of every sentence. Although there is not any conjunction between each sentence, they can link them up smoothly and show coherence of Chinese language. One of the best examples that can explain this phenomenon is Chinese

38、 ancient poetry, especially poems of Tang dynasty. For example, 清明时节雨纷纷，路上行人欲断魂。借问酒家何处有，牧童遥指杏花村（杜牧清明）. There are mostly four sentences in one poem, so every word must be considered again and again. Although conjunctions are seldom been used, the whole meaning and beauty would never be weakened.Mostl

39、y, either speakers or listeners would not highly pay attention to whether the structure of every sentence is complete or not. Sometimes there is just one word, but the whole meaning is clear enough. For instance, 阿Q没有家，（他）住在未庄的土谷祠里；（他）也没有固定的职业。只给人家做短工，（人家叫他）割麦（他）便割麦，（人家叫他）舂米（他）便舂米，（人家叫他）撑船（他）便撑船（鲁迅阿

40、Q正传）. Although words in brackets are omitted, the whole coherence and meaning have never been affected. Moreover, because the role of tense is not been taken importance to, people do not need to pay extra attention to the variety of tense, voice or aspect. Therefore, due to the coherence of each sen

41、tence, there is no need adding any transitional words that role nothing.Chinese belongs to a totally parataxis system that has an unclear classification of words. It is also quite difficult to judge which class a word belongs to according to its affix.3.1.2 Hypotaxis and Consistence in EnglishIn con

42、trast, English takes emphasis on hypotaxis and consistence. Thus, the connection of words in formal and grammatical structure has to be analyzed attentively. Different components can be handed together by relative words, conjunctions, prepositions and other means. For example, “He came in just the d

43、ay before from Georgia where he had spent his vacation basking in Caucasian sun after the completion of the construction job which he had be engaged on in the south.” The key words “where”, “after” and “which” connect every element of the sentence properly and convey hypotaxis of English. And, in or

44、der to keep structure of one sentence completely, it is quite common to read long sentences every here and there.There is not any difficulty in understanding those long sentences for westerners, but for those who do not regard English as their native language; it will be one of the major barriers in

45、 learning English. Especially for Chinese people, as they are always feeling puzzled about all kinds of grammatical rules which demand high consistence of tense, aspect, voice and mood.In order to keep hypotaxis and show word class, English vocabulary has a great number of prefix, infix and suffix t

46、hat can distinct the characteristic of words. Nouns usually end with suffixes like “-er”, “or”, “-ist” and “-tion” while adjectives ends often by adding “-ful”, “-less”, “-al” and “-y”. Concerning with the importance of conjunctions in English, there are a great many of transitional words in convers

47、ations and writings. Practically, westerners used to take emphasis on information that follows conjunctions, which is really a helpful way to understand the true meaning of a conversation or writing.3.2 Contrast of Sino-Western Thinking Patterns3.2.1 Chinese Comprehensive and Overall ThinkingChinese

48、 consider the subject as core of the whole universe according to their traditional comprehensive and overall thinking pattern. All the three most important philosophies of China, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism take overall thinking seriously. Such as, 道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物。（老子道德经）, 逝者如斯夫，不分昼夜。（孔子论语） a

49、nd 一花一世界，一叶一菩提。（严华经） all believe the whole world can be reflected from small objects. And the representatives of those philosophies, Lao Zi, Confucius and Buddha are highly worshiped compared with those scientists who even actually made great contribution to the world. In this way, there will be no

50、question why those celebrities in China remembered by people till now are always philosophers, poets and emperors rather than scientists. It might be explained why there is still no Chinese scientists who have ever won Nobel Price, either.Besides, on account of the overall that includes every part c

51、losely related to each other, people in China tend to learn each section after grabbing the whole situation. People can still find its reflection on Chinese peoples collectivism. They were told to consider everything from the benefit of group when they were children. So there will be no question why

52、 there were so many people that sacrificed thief lives to protect collective or even countrys property.When it comes to the characteristic of comprehensive thinking, Chinese always rely highly on metaphor, symbol, association and analogy to understand new things and elaborate questions, rather than

53、some scientific ways. Whats more, the philosophy of overall thinking has a profound influence on Chinese literature, painting and architecture. The traditional Chinese Xiehouyu (歇后语)constantly prevent from saying the second part in real conversations as listeners themselves can learn the exact meani

54、ng that is omitted. E.g.哑巴吃黄连有苦说不出, literally it indicates the mute who eats bitter herbs can not express his discomfort, but later extended to describe someone who find it hard to tell his suffering. In addition, Chinese traditional ink and wash paintings are considered to be abstract in westerners

55、 eyes. But rather than realism reflected in oil paintings, Chinese people have a preference for comprehensive thinking to enjoy the real meaning and intention of the artist.This kind of thinking pattern can also be seen in a relatively small communityfamily. Chinese people have the tradition of resp

56、ecting the old and cherishing the young, thus the whole family will be united together and stay in harmony without contradiction. However, westerners will be hardly to do or even understand this Chinese-like thinking pattern.3.2.2 Westerners Rational and Individual ThinkingThe dominated philosophy i

57、n western history is rational and individual thinking. The key point is considered to be objectivity, absolute truth and rationalism. On the base of rational thinking, the world is composed of something special that beyond peoples understanding and peoples action could not affect anything but reflec

58、t the rational structure of world like a mirror.Afterwards, rationalism has become a philosophical theory that infiltrated to every aspect of the world and influenced west peoples minds, behaviors and languages deeply. Rationalism is also consistent with Aristotelianism that takes emphasis on scient

59、ific experiments and formal demonstration. As a result, European natural science has been greatly pushed forward.Moreover, western peoples thinking is individual and distinctive. They always pay more attention to individual and independent role and interrelationship of each other. Compared with Chinese peoples overall thinking and collectivism, people in west have received individualism-prefer education. They are more likely to stand on t