中英文句中思想結構之比較研究

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THOUGHT STRUCTURES IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH SENTENCES

本研究根據有代表性的中英文讀物抽樣，分類計算連繫子句與子句的連詞，試圖發現中西思想結構的特性。結果發現：(a)與英文讀物比較，中文讀物中使用較多種連詞；(b)與英文讀物比較，中文讀物中使用依存關係連詞多於並列關係連詞；(c)中文讀物中，與書寫式文體比較，口語式文體使用較多連詞。這些結果說明，中文讀物中不但使用口語上的連詞，而且保留文言中連詞，以連繫思想單位。而且由於中文語句比較缺乏語法上的明顯標記，中文讀物中使用較多的連詞，以便讀者理解讀物中思想結構。

This study characterizes Chinese and Western thought structures by classifying and tabulating the connectives used for combining clauses in Chinese and English sentences. There are three main findings. First, more connectives appear in Chinese than in English sentences. Second, compared to English, more connectives appear in Chinese for dependent clauses than for coordinate clauses. Third, in the Chinese corpus, more connectives appear in speech-style sentences than in literal-style sentences. These findings are accounted for: (a) by the fact that Chinese sentences use literal-style connectives as well as speech-style connectives and (b) by the assumption that Chinese sentences use more connectives than English sentences for relating clauses in order to compensate for the relative lack of grammatical markings to achieve a level of sentence comprehension in Chinese comparable to that of English.