The Segmentation and Representation of Translocative Motion Events in English and Chinese Discourse: A Contrastive Study

ISBN-13: 9789813340398 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 210 str.

Guofeng Zheng

Spis treści

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Introduction: Events, Motion Events and Translocative Motion Events

1.1 Translocative Motion Events (TMEs) 

1.1.1 Defining event

1.1.2 TME

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

1.2.1 Purpose of the study

1.2.2 Significance of the study

1.3 Framework and Methodological Issues

1.4 The Roadmap

Chapter 2 MEP Principles and the Segmentation and Representation of the TMES

2.0 Introduction

2.1 Theoretical Issues

2.1.1 Talmyan dichotomy typology and motion event studies by other scholars

2.1.1.1 Talmyan dichotomy typology

2.1.1.2 Dichotomy or trichotomy

2.1.2 Event segmentation

2.2 Principles of MEP

2.2.1 The biuniqueness constraint

2.2.2 The macro-event linking principle

2.2.3 The referential uniqueness constraint

2.2.4 The unique vector constraint

2.2.5 The loss of MEP

2.2.6 A brief summary of Section 2.2

2.3 The Segmentation of Complex Motion Events and the TME Constructions with MEP

2.3.1 The conceptual structure and types of motion events

2.3.2 The segmentation of complex motion events

2.3.3 The TME constructions with MEP

2.4 The Components of TMEs and Parameter-setting

2.4.1 Figure and parameter-setting

2.4.2 Motion and parameter- setting

2.4.3 Path and parameter-setting

2.4.4 Ground and parameter-setting

2.5 Tertium Comparationis and the Hypothesis for This Study

2.6 Summary

Chapter 3 Corpus Tagging and Statistical Work

3.0 Introduction

3.1 Research Design

3.1.1 The parallel translation corpus

3.1.2 Sentence selection and tagging

3.1.3 Variables

3.2 English and Chinese TME Constructions

3.2.1 The MEP sentences in English and Chinese texts

3.2.2 The subevent constructions in English and Chinese texts

3.3 Representing English and Chinese TME Constructions

3.3.1 Who is moving

3.3.2 How to move

3.3.3 Which road to follow

3.3.4 Where to go

3.4 Summary

Chapter 4 Contrasting the Representation of English and Chinese TMEs

4.0 Introduction

4.1 The Representation of English and Chinese TMEs

4.1.1 English TMEs in the original texts

4.1.2 English TMEs in the translated texts

4.2.1 Chinese TMEs in the original texts

4.2.2 Chinese TMEs in the translated texts

4.2.3 At hand or in the distance? Part I: English and Chinese TME constructions in comparison

4.3 The TMEs Between English and Chinese

4.3.1 From English to Chinese

4.3.2 From Chinese to English

4.4 The Representation of Motion Event Components

4.4.1 The representation of Actants

4.4.2 The representation of Motion

4.4.3 The representation of Paths

4.4.5 At hand or in the distance? Part II: English and Chinese TME component representation in comparison

4.5 Beyond Surface Representation

4.6 Summary

Chapter 5 Conclusions

5.0 Introduction

5.1 Major Findings

5.2 Theoretical Implications

5.3 Limitations and Future Study

Bibliography

O autorze

Guofeng Zheng is an Associate Professor at East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST). He received his Ph.D. degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University in 2011. He is a member of China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese, Assistant Dean of the School of Foreign Languages at ECUST and Director of ECUST’s Master of Translation and Interpretation Program.

 

His research over the past 20 years has been devoted to the area of English and Chinese contrastive analysis, and he has published nearly 20 research articles and reviews in journals both within China and abroad. Over the past 10 ten years, he has narrowed his research focus to English and Chinese motion events, establishing himself as one of the most productive researchers in this field. Over the years, he has won many prestigious teaching awards and research funds, e.g. a Nomination for Best Supervisor Team ECUST, 1st Prize for Excellent Teaching and Education ECUST, Model Teacher ECUST, National Social Science Foundation (17XJY003) and Shanghai Education Commission Award.   

Blurb

This book provides a systematic, contrastive analysis of the segmentation and representation of English and Chinese Translocative Motion Events (TMEs), which possess Macro-Event Property (MEP). It addresses all the issues critical to understanding TMEs in English and Chinese, from event segmentation, MEP principles and the conceptual structure of TMEs and their constituents, to the representation of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground. The book argues that the corpus-based alignment for the TME segmentation in both languages, the parameters of Actant, Motion, Path and Ground and their relevant statistical description are particularly important for understanding English and Chinese TMEs. The linguistic materialization of Actant, Ground, Path and Motion, together with a wealth of tables and figures, offers convincing evidence to support the typological classification of English and Chinese. The book’s suggestions regarding the Talmyan bipartite typology and Bohnemeyer’s MEP contribute to the advancement of TME studies and language typology, and help learners to understand motion events and English-Chinese typological similarities and differences.