英汉思维差异的“字本位”视角

On the Different Thinking Patterns between English and Chinese in Light of Zi as the Basic Structural Unit of Chinese

根据徐通锵先生倡导的“字本位”理论,“字”是汉语的基本结构单位。受该理论启发,以“字本位”为视角研究汉语中的“字”与英语中的“词”(word)之间的区别及其所反映的英汉思维方式的差异,认为从语言基本结构单位的对比出发研究英汉两种语言由此产生的差异,可以帮助我们以小见大,不失为一条探索英汉对比的新途径。

As is advocated by Xu Tongqiang, ‘Zi＇ is the basic structural unit of Chinese. Inspired by and in light of this theory, the present paper investigates the differences between ‘Zi＇ and ‘word＇ in English, as well as the respective characteristics of the thinking patterns of the two languages derived from these differences. This, as is shown in the paper, can serve as a new approach to the contrastive studies between English and Chinese.