The Grammar of Weather: With Special Reference to English and Chinese Weather Forecast Text
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摘要: 类型学研究表明,各语言中基本天气表达不外乎三种类型:1)过程表达天气意义,2)参与者表达天气意义,以及3)过程和参与者共同表达天气意义。天气现象不是动作(action),而是事件(event),它没有一般意义上的参与者,是一种无人称结构。因此,过程是天气现象最根本的实现形式,如:英语中的“It is raining”,汉语中的“下雨了”。本文通过对比英汉天气预报语篇发现,实际使用中,基本的天气过程很少出现,天气现象多经过语法隐喻编码为参与者参与到不同类型的过程中,如关系过程、物质过程等。就参与者角色以及过程类型而言,英语语篇语法隐喻手段更丰富。另外,英语倾向于通过及物模式表达天气现象,汉语则更多使用作格模式。英语中非特指用法的you、we等代词也会参与到天气表达中,汉语更倾向于使用无人称结构。这样的共性和差异与天气现象本身的语义特征和英汉语的类型特征有关。Abstract: 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.
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Key words:
- weather /
- grammar /
- process /
- participant /
- grammatical metaphor
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