English vs. Chinese: Ten Pairs of Features

By

Zhao Na (赵娜No.200915310312) , Class 3

1. Synthetic vs. Analytic

A synthetic language is characterized by frequent and systematic use of inflected forms to express grammatical relationships.

An analytic language is marked by a relatively frequent use of function words, auxiliary verbs, and changes in word order to express syntactic relations, rather than of inflected forms.

Modern English has become analytic but still frequently uses some hereditary inflections from Old English. It is therefore a synthetic-analytic language. Chinese is a typical analytic language. Inflection, word order and the use of function words are employed as the three grammatical devices in building English sentences.

Inflectional vs. Non-inflectional

In English, nouns, pronouns, and verbs are inflected. Such grammatical meanings as parts of speech, gender, number, case, person, tense, aspect, voice, mood, etc. can be expressed by the use of inflected forms with or without the help of function words and word order, which is generally not true of Chinese. In Chinese the above grammatical meanings are mostly implied in contexts or between the lines, though often with the help of word order.

E.g. He moved astonishingly fast.

He moved with astonishing rapidity.

His movements are astonishingly rapid.

His movements astonished us by their rapidity.

他行动之快令人惊讶。

他行动之迅速令人惊讶。

他行动之迅速令我们惊讶不已。

Word Order: Flexible vs. Inflexible

The less inflective a language, the more rigid the word order. Word order in English is not so rigid as in Chinese. More ways of inversion are often seen in English. E.g. What in the world do you mean?

你的意思究竟是什么？

What a beautiful voice you have!

你有多美的嗓音啊！

Not a finger did I lay on him?

我从来没有指责过他。