硕士学位论文英汉歧义现象对比与翻译.docx

1、硕士学位论文英汉歧义现象对比与翻译 学校代码：10254 密 级： 论文编号： 上海海事大学SHANGHAI MARITIME UNIVERSITY硕 士 学 位 论 文MASTER DISSERTATION论文题目: 英汉歧义现象对比与翻译 学科专业：外国语言学及应用语言学作者姓名： 吴 兆 丽指导教师： 张海英 副教授 完成日期： 二八年六月 论文独创性声明 本论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。论文中除了特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，不包含其他人或其他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。其他同志对本研究的启发和所做的贡献均已在论文中作了明确的声明并表示了谢意。 作者签名：

2、日期： 论文使用授权声明 本人同意上海海事大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权保留送交论文复印件，允许论文被查阅和借阅；学校可以上网公布论文的全部或部分内容，可以采用影印、缩印或者其它复制手段保存论文。保密的论文在解密后遵守此规定。作者签名： 导师签名： 日期： Shanghai Maritime University 上海海事大学 地 址：中国 上海 浦东大道1550号 1550 Pudong Dadao邮 编：200135 Shanghai, 200135电 话：(021)58855200 P.R.China网 址： Ambiguity in English and Chines

3、e A Contrastive Study and Some Suggestions on TranslationBy Wu ZhaoliUnder the Supervision ofProfessor Zhang HaiyingA Thesis Submitted to the College of Foreign Language ofShanghai Maritime Universityin Partial Fulfillment ofthe Requirements for the MA DegreeShanghai Maritime UniversityJune, 2008Ack

4、nowledgementsThis thesis would otherwise never have been completed without the help and support of many people.First of all, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Zhang Haiying who read and reread my writing and detailed comments. Her remarkable insights and suggestions have made gr

5、eat contributions to the completion of this thesis.I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Professor Wang Juquan for teaching us how to conduct a contrastive study between English and Chinese, Professor Zheng Lixin for his lectures on general linguistics, Professor Wang Dawei and Han Zhong

6、hua for offering translating theories and practices. Their adequate help has had a remarkable influence on my completion of the thesis.Finally, I give my thanks to my family, friends and classmates, for giving me unfailing support and patience while I was pressing on with my paper. 摘 要 歧义是语言的普遍特征，是语

7、言共性的表现。但是，语言不同，语言的结构也就不同。再加上不同民族的语言习惯、思维方式等的差异，使得语言在具有共性的同时，每一种语言还具有与众不同的特性。所以，歧义现象在不同的语言中有不同的表现方式。按照结构类型，语言被分为孤立语，粘着语和屈折语。就这种分类来说，英语属于一种混合型的语言，其一般的形态结构是粘着语类型。汉语是一种孤立语，其粘着语素很少(Robins, 2000: 377-378)。这两种语言不仅可以从结构方面，而且可以从意义方面进行比较。再者，随着英语在语法上越来越向分析语发展，它与汉语的共性也越来越多，这使我们可以对这两者语言进行对比分析。本文的主要目的就是对英汉两种语言中的歧

8、义现象做对比研究， 并将研究成果应用于翻译实践。无论在英语中还是在汉语中， 歧义现象都有很多种不同的分类方法。为了便于对两种语言进行对比分析，我们把它分为四类：词汇歧义，句法歧义，语义歧义及语用歧义。有些学者认为词汇歧义与语义歧义是同一回事，因为有时它们难以区分。然而，我们在这里分开来讲有两个原因：一是我们从不同的角度强调这两种歧义；二是这种分类便于对英汉两语进行对比分析。通过对比我们发现，英汉的词汇歧义在类型和引发原因上有很多相似点。英语中的句法歧义比汉语丰富，而汉语的语义歧义比英语多。由形态变化引起的语法歧义是英语所特有的。汉语没有严格意义上的形体变化，但是有语意格。这些都是由语言本身的特

9、点决定的。在对四类歧义现象进行分析之后，我们对翻译中遇到的歧义现象进行了探讨。在将对比结果应用于翻译实践的同时，我们对歧义现象的翻译提出了几点建议。关键词：歧义，对比分析，语境，功能对等ABSTRACTAs a pervasive feature of language, ambiguity is a reflection of language universals. However, because different languages possess different structures and different nations have different language h

10、abits and modes of thinking, besides similarity, each language has its specific characters. Therefore, ambiguity phenomenon displays itself differently in different languages. In structural typology, languages are divided into isolating, agglutinative, and inflective types. English is a mixed type o

11、f language in respect of the three types. Regular morphological structures in English are usually agglutinative. Chinese is classified as isolating, in which bound morphemes are rare. (Robins, 2000: 377-378) These two languages can be contrasted not only from structure but also from meaning. Further

12、more, since English has become more and more analytical in grammar, it now shares more similarities with Chinese in many ways. And this makes it easier for us to carry out a contrastive study of ambiguity in English and Chinese. This dissertation aims at a contrastive study of the ambiguity phenomen

13、on in English and Chinese.There are many different kinds of classifications of ambiguity in both English and Chinese. In order to make it easier for us to make a contrastive study between the two languages, we divide it into four types, namely, lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, semantic ambigu

14、ity and pragmatic ambiguity. Some scholars think that lexical ambiguity and semantic ambiguity are the same things, because sometimes they are mixed with each other and it is hard to say what kind of ambiguity it belongs to. However, there are two reasons for describing them separately: One is that

15、we want to give emphasis on these two kinds of ambiguity from different angles; the other is that we find it convenient for us to conduct a contrast study between the two languages. By contrast, we have found that lexical ambiguity in the two languages is similar to each other, both in type and in s

16、ource. Syntactic ambiguity in English seems to be richer than in Chinese, while semantically structural ambiguity in English is not so rich as it is in Chinese. Grammatical ambiguity due to inflection endings is a specialty in English. The Chinese language has no inflection, but has semantic cases.

17、This is decided by the natures of these two languages.After comparing the ambiguity phenomenon of the two languages from the four aspects, we will analyze ambiguity phenomenon in translation, trying to apply the contrastive study to translation and give some suggestions about how to deal with ambigu

18、ous expressions in translation.KEYWORDS: ambiguity, contrastive study, context, functional equivalenceContentsChaper 1 Introduction 11.1 literature review 11.1.1 The study of ambiguity in western countries 11.1.2 The study of ambiguity in China 21.1.3 Contrastive study of ambiguity in English and Ch

19、inese 31.2 Terminological Review 41.2.1 Ambiguity 41.2.2 Vagueness 61.2.3 Polysemy 71.3 Theoretical foundation 71.3.1 N. Chomskys theory of Transformational-generative grammar & Ambiguity 71.3.2 Speech act theory & Ambiguity 101.3.3 Cooperative Principle & Ambiguity 12Chapter 2 A contrastive study o

20、f ambiguity in English and Chinese 142.1 Lexical Ambiguity 142.1.1 Homonyms 142.1.2 Polysemy 162.1.3 Categorical lexical ambiguity 172.2 Syntactic ambiguity 182.2.1 Multiple modification ambiguity in subordinate structure 192.2.2 Multiple modification ambiguity in coordinate structure 202.2.3 Gramma

21、tical relationships 222.3 Semantic ambiguity 242.3.1 Different semantic relationships 242.3.2 Different scopes of negation 262.3.3 Ellipsis 292.3.4 Semantic orientation 302.4 Pragmatic ambiguities 312.4.1 Ambiguity of Deixis 322.4.2 Ambiguity of conversational implicature 352.4.3 Ambiguity of indire

22、ct speech act 372.4.4 Ambiguity of contextual restriction 38Chapter 3 Ambiguity and translation 423.1 Factors causing ambiguity 423.1.1 Linguistic factor 423.1.2 Cultural factor 423.1.3 Factor of mode of thinking 433.2 Ambiguity in translation 443.2.1 A principle of translation 463.2.2 Three suggest

23、ions to deal with ambiguity in E-C&C-E translation 48Chapter 4 Conclusion 56Bibliography 58Chaper 1 IntroductionAmbiguity is considered as a kind of special relationship between the form and the meaning of a language; that is, one language form contains more than one meaning. How does ambiguity aris

24、e? In a simple word, it is due to “the infinite use of finite language”(Qiu Shude，1998:599). The forms of a language are simple and the rules of its combinations are limited; however, the meanings of a language are complicated and unlimited. According to universal grammar, most of our languages are

25、constructed in a linear order by combination of linguistic semiotics following different grammatical rules. During this process, two and more hierarchical relationships often fall into one form of a sentence structure, and then ambiguity arises.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 is an

26、introduction, including literature review, terminological review and theoretical foundation. Chapter 2 tries to conduct a contrastive study of ambiguity between English and Chinese, on the basis of the classification of lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, semantic ambiguity and pragmatic ambigui

27、ty. Chapter 3 proposes different approaches to the translation of ambiguity. And the final part, Chapter 4 is the conclusion. The present dissertation aims to find out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in terms of ambiguity phenomenon by a contrastive study, and apply the

28、comparison to translation.1.1 literature review1.1.1 The study of ambiguity in western countriesThe study of ambiguity in western countries has a long history, which can be traced far back to ancient Greece, when it was studied within the scope of philosophy. Aristotle, a well-known philosopher, dis

29、cussed ambiguity in his writing De Sophistics Elenchis, in which he lists six sources of misunderstanding, namely, ambiguity, amphiboly, combination, division of words, accent, and form of expression. Among them, amphiboly refers to the ambiguity caused by grammatical structures, and combination ind

30、icates the ambiguity caused by combination. Later, the Stoics, one of the famous philosophy schools, had a systematic study about ambiguity (Catherine, 1993). The Greek linguistic philosopher Galen proposes a more comprehensive theory on ambiguity. He believes that language is the vehicle for commun

31、icating information and language expression has three kinds of effect, namely, good, bad and irrelevant effect. Ambiguity is the embodiment of the bad effect, and every misunderstanding is caused by ambiguities. We can see that the early philosophers and grammarians believe that ambiguity performs a

32、 negative role in communication and it is generally a deviation from the ideal language. However, a great turning point appears in Saussures period, when descriptive linguistics came into being. The main task of descriptive linguistics is to explain language phenomenon, and many linguists became interested in explaining ambiguity. Chomsky has emphasized that