A contrastive study on English-Chinese dual conceptualized words

◆张 琦 徐金龙 程 群 汤雪峰

(解放军理工大学杂志社)

A contrastive study on English-Chinese dual conceptualized words

◆张 琦 徐金龙 程 群 汤雪峰

(解放军理工大学杂志社)

Dual number,as a special kind of plural number,hardly attracts attention although English grammar about number is so self-contained.Dual case,once an important grammar category inOld English,now has vanished in English language.A contrastwasmade in English and Chinese dual conceptualized nouns,verbs, prepositions,pronouns,quantifiers and affixes.It is supposed that cultural and philosophical facors do bring the common and diversed forms of dual concepts in the two languages.

number dual conceptualized words culture philosophy

Dual number,regarded as the origin of plural number,deserves to be important.Although English grammar about number is so self-contained that every grammar book gives great length to describe grammatical rules of number case, we have noticed that no matter in English orChinese,dual number,as a special kind of plural number,hardly attracts attention.Whatmerits special attention is that there are several words expressing dual-number concepts in both languages.

Ⅰ Dual Number in other Languages

In old Russian,there were once dual formswhich were used to express two items.What’s more,other parts of speech which were related syntactically to nouns,such aspronouns,adjectives and verbs,also had dual forms.Dual forms also had case changes.Dual numberwas first used to express nounsof twinned items,such as both eyes,both sides,both ears and both banks.In about 13th-14thcentury,dual for mswere replaced byplural forms,whichweremore convenient for communication.In modern Russian,there are still traces of dual forms. Dual forms of the first person pronouns only existed in poems,while none in essays.Therefore,dual forms of personal pronouns were gradually replaced by preposition both’or numeral two’.Thus,dual forms vanished in mediaeval English.

Ⅱ The Emergence and Vanishing of Dual

Ancient people’s thought was called primitive thought.They did not cognize abstract plurality but concrete plurality.That is to say,one is singular,and more than one,meaning 2 or3 ormore,are concrete plurality.Dual number can be a transition from one to more.Dual case waswidely accepted in old English, which was first used to express twinned things.W ith the development of abstract thoughts,people gained the conceptof abstractplurality.Concrete dual form was gradually replaced by abstractplurality,because the latterwas convenient for human communication.The for mation of languagewas far later than thatof thought. Accordingly,those numerals came into being later than the concept of number. The vanishing of dual number,as other numeric categories,keeps to a rule that is opposite to the Number Hierarchy theory.Corbett(2005)says that if a language has singular,dual,trial number and plurality,then trial numbermay vanish before dual,and dualmay vanish before plurality.

Ⅲ Contrast of C-E Dual ConceptualizedW ords

1.Dual Conceptualized Nouns

There is a special group of nouns thatoccur in pluralmostof the time which are called two-part nouns.They are divided into 3 kinds,Articles of clothing: trousers,knickers,pants,pyjamas,shorts,jeans,drawers,dungarees,etc. These words are used in plural for m because they consist of two trouser-legs. The word"pyjamas"means a suit of clothes that consist of trousers and frock. Insruments composed of two parts:scissors,shears,pliers,pincers,spectacles, glasses,tongs,bellows,compasses,chopsticks,trunks,etc.These items in common have two main parts:Spectacles and glasses are used for two eyes;Two chopsticks are used together to pick up foods;scissors,shears,pliers,pincers, tongs,bellows and compasses are all tools composed of two parts,since people use them with two fingers.Appellations of two people:couples,parents,twins, etc."couples"means the wife and the husband;"parents"means the mother and the father;"twins"means the younger and the elder sister/brother.Since Chinese characters do not have numeric symbols,dual conceptualized nouns are not particular in form.The author supposes that English takes two intimate people as a whole entitywhile Chinese emphasizes particularly on the individual two people.

2.Dual Conceptualized Verbs

It is well known that Chinese characters are ideograms while English are phoneticized linetype words.Thus in Chinese most verbs that are related to hands,eyes and feet have respective character components as"扌”,“目”and“足 ”,but in English the meaning or even the part of speech cannot be easily judged from theword form.It’s clear that English and Chinesewordmarkers had the same cognition about the importance of their bodies.From the above,the meaning superposition of English and Chinese dual conceptualized verbs can be clearly found.From the acceptation level,most of the E-C corresponding verbs mean the same or similarly.But in the other hand,verbs are so detailed in Chinese vocabulary that some of them have very slight difference,while English seems to be more general.

3.Dual Conceptualized Prepositions and Pronouns

English adjectives and pronouns are two typical classes of dual-number concept words.They are themost familiar aswell as themost confusing and difficult to first leaners.This kind ofwords are finite in number.

(1)All(Beingor representing the entire or total number,amount,or quantity)/Both(One and the other;relating to or being two in conjunction). In Chinese,“都”refers to individual ones,not the entire.However the equivalent word"both/all"just take the items as a whole entity.

(2)every(being one of a group,while the quantity is uncertain,emphasizing no exception)/each(Being one of two,be considered individually).

(3)any(One,some,every,or allwithout specification)/either(The one or the other)The traditional rule holds that either should be used only to refer to one of two items and that any is requiredwhen more than two items are involved. It’s also an empty group in Chinese.

(4)none(Not any of several)/neither(Notone or the otherof two;not either).Interestingly,the meaning of“none”and“neither”must be explained with“都”in Chinese,with the quantity of items ignored.

(5)the other(another one of two)/one another(one more;an additional; distinctly different from the first;one of an undeter mined number or group).

(6)between(in the midstof two)/among(in themidstofmore than two or indefinite ones).It is true that"between"is the only choice when exactly two entities are specified.When more than two entities are involved,or when the number of entities is unspecified,"among"is a better choice.

4.Dual Conceptualized Quantifiers

There are manywords in English that express"two",for example,double, dual,couple,pair,twain,etc.Similarly,in Chinese there are“双”,“对”,“副”,“俩”,etc.It’s clear that since quantifier is not an individualword class but a sub category of noun,double,dual,couple,pair,twain are grouped into nouns in dictionaries.

5.Dual Conceptualized Affixes

English vocabulary abundance greatly owes to its various prefixes aswell as suffixes.A good mastery of affixwill greatly expand a learner’s vocabulary.Dual conceptualized prefixes diverse in English,from which we can infer that dual is an importantmeaning in English.For example,twi-,bi-,di-,dy-,etc.

Unlike English prefixes,Chinese dual ismostly expressed by a suffix"俩”. The recension of Etymologicon published in 1988 by Commercial Press ranges“俩”to a dual and explains it as“two items”.Dual can be used to count anything,especially twinned items,such as both hands,both feet,both ears and both eyes.

Ⅳ Factors I nfluencing the Use of Dual ConceptualizedW ords

Since ancient Greek,dichotomy,which stresses the contradiction and antitheses between the two poles,has been treasured in western cultures,bringing for ward the belief in symmetry.Take thementioned prepositions and pronouns for example,English people are aware of the relation between two parts in the whole but Chinese people seem to neglect this inner relation.By contrast,Chinese way of thinking ispredominantly synthetic,holism and intuition taking prioritywhile. According to Chinese traditional culture,everything is composed of two sides“阴”and“阳”.“阴”is dark,female and negative;and“阳”is light,male and positive.The two forces,“阴”and“阳”combined,produce all things.

From a philosophical point of view,those common points in words building mayreflect the same thinking,the same principle and the same attitude of us human beings in many aspects.The sameness trendency is resulted from the common primitive cultural psychological structure.

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