汉英句法结构框架对比——汉语的“话题-述题”与英语的“主语-谓语”

A contrastive study of syntactic structure in Chinese and English——“Topic-comment” in Chinese and “Subject-object” in English

根据李讷、汤普森对语言的分类,汉语属于"注重话题"的语言,英语属于"注重主语"的语言。换言之,就句法结构框架而言,汉语属于"话题-述题"型框架;英语属于"主语-谓语"型框架。其中,汉语中的"话题""述题"与英语中的"主语""谓语"并不是一一对应,他们之间有着本质上的区别:一方面,话题与主语在结构位置、所担当成分及其有定与否方面存在着很大的差别;另一方面,与英语中谓语成分相比,汉语中的述题成分显得更加丰富。以上的细微差别使得"话题-述题"框架与"主语-谓语"框架截然不同。只有弄清了这两种句法框架本质上的区别,才能极大地促进汉英语在造句方面的教学工作。

According to Charles Li and Sandra Thompson, Chinese is a topic - prominent language while English a subject - prominent language. In other words, in terms of syntactic structure, Chinese belongs to the ＂topic - comment＂ language while English the ＂subject - object＂ language. However, there exist great differences behind the two structures： for One thing, they differ from each other in position, component and definiteness or not; for another, compared with English, comment in Chi- nese appears to be more various. The above subtle difference widens the gap between Chinese and English. Only figurlng out the essential difference can we promote the teaching and learning of Chinese and English in sentence writing.