The Grammar of Weather: With Special Reference to English and Chinese Weather Forecast Text

Typological studies show that world languages fall into three types in terms of the semantic element which is primarily responsible for the expression of weather. They are: 1) Process expressing weather, 2) Participant expressing weather, and 3) Process and Participant expressing weather collectively. As events lacking inherent participants, meteorological phenomena are typically expressed as impersonal constructions, with the semantic load falling mainly on the Process (e.g. It's raining in English and 下雨了 in Chinese) . The present study compares and contrasts an English and a Chinese text of weather forecast. It is found that the congruent expression of meteorological process is seldom employed, if at all. Weather events are mostly expressed through grammatical metaphor, i.e. via nominalization and transference of process types, e.g. via relational processes and material processes, etc. The English text is more grammatically metaphorized both in terms of the type of process types and the participant role. Another finding is that, apart from the transitive model, the ergative model is used to a considerable degree, though the English text is more oriented to the transitive model, and the Chinese text to the ergative. In the former, such indefinite pronouns as we and you are used very often so that both people and the weather event are involved in the transitive model. The latter employs the impersonal construction a lot. These similarities and differences are the outcome of the semantic features of meteorological phenomena and typological features of both languages.