英语本科毕业论文Translation of Denominal Verbs.doc

Translation of Denominal VerbsI IntroductionDenominal verbs, simplely said, which are the verbs oringinated from nouns or nouns are used as verbs. They exist massively in English and appear frequently (only you are unconscious and used to them, that is all). There are few denominal verbs in Chinese and the frequency that they appear is very low. They exist in English but not necessarily in Chinese, so their correspondences are even fewer. However, sometimes its not greatly good processing which translate the English sentence into Chinese. According to the investigation, the reason why grasp insufficiently about the semantic structure and semantic bleaching of denominal verbs, which restrict the understanding and expression of the whole sentence, because this type of words exit generally not only in oral English but also in written language, such as newspaper, magazines and so on. It is necessary to carry on the discussion and solution about “bottleneck question”. This thesis analyzes the semantic structure of denominal verbs simply and stress their translation. The semantic structure has been made to be clear so that the above question has been solved greatly in order to achieve a new theory layer that draw inferences about other cases from one instance and comprehend by analogy and know why any also knows, not only sense but also speak out. II Morphological Structure and Word-Formation2.1 The component parts of a wordA morpheme is the minimal significant element. It is also the smallest unit of grammatical analysis. It can have of show a grammatical function. Words are composed of morphemes. Some words are formed by one morpheme, such as log, clerk, soldier and so on; and others are formed by two or more morphemes, such as lovely (love + -ly), unacceptable (un-, accept, -able).2.2 Content morphemes, grammatical morphemes and allomorphs Content morphemes known as free morphemes are those that may constitute words by themselves: cat, walk, and kind, teach. Grammatical morphemes known as bound morphemes are those that must appear with at least one other morpheme, either bound or free: cat + s, walk + ing, un + kind, teach + er. Sometimes words consist of two content morphemes: lighthouse, housework. Grammatical morphemes may also be called affixes; affixes are segments that are added to a root. In English, this root is usually a free morphemefor example, the word “acceptable” is formed by root accept and adjective marker able. But in some cases this root is a bound morphemefor example, the word “audience” consists of bound root audi- and noun marker ence. Many morphemes have semantic meaning attached to them. Certainly all free morphemes do: dog, horse, room, and house. Bound morphemes, however, may not. The plural marker s and the past tense marker d/-ed by themselves have no semantic meaning, they contain only grammatical meaning. The same applies to the suffixes tion and ise: -tion may be used to form a noun and ise to form a verb. According to Stephem Ullmann, words that are formed by one content morpheme only and cannot be analyzed into parts are called opaque words: axe, glove. Words that consist of more than one morpheme and can be segmented into parts are called transparent words: workable (word + -able), doorman (door + man). A morpheme is a linguistic abstraction; it is a concept. It needs to be represented in certain phonological forms. These forms are called morphs. It can be found that the same functional unit varies in form from one context to another: thus the terminal (e)s of cats, dogs, horses has the regular meaning “more than one”, yet has three different phonological forms: / -s, -z, -iz /. The three forms are the variants of the same morpheme s. They are called allomorphs.III The Semantic Structure of Denominal Verbs Denominal verbs refer to a verb which derives by the noun. As there are origin relations between the noun and its correspondent verb, E. Clark and H. Clark(1979) and Quirk (1985: 1561) call such words parent nouns. The denominal verbs are usually formed with functions as the verb by parent noun, dont need to add prefix or suffix, thus the two sides are often in the same form. For instance, the denominal verb “paint, land, dress” are the same as its correspondent parent noun “paint, land, dress” in form. Look from the novel degree of denominal verbs, they can be divided into two kinds: the ordinary denominal verbs and the innovation denominal verbs. The ordinary denominal verbs are accepted in the usage (such as paint, land, dress); the innovation denominal verbs refer to in certain literary style or in linguistic environment, the noun serves as the verb flexibly. For example, “to author the book, to sheet the furniture, to tenant the building”, the verb is author sheet tenant. This kind of speech flexible usage belongs to “nonce use” or “innovative use”, which has lively，novel and sprightly style significance. According to the semantic characteristic that the parent noun would act in denominal verbs, Clark & Clark (1979) divided the denominal verbs into eight kinds. (a) location verb, such as kennel the dog; (b) locatum verb, such as saddle the horse; (c) agent verb, such as butcher the cow; (d) duration verb, such as summer in Hawaii; (e) experience verb, such as boycott the store; (f) goal verb, such as powder the aspirin; (g) source verb, such as word the sentence; (h) instrumental verb, such as satellite news; The parent nouns stand for location, locatum, agent, duration, experience, goal, source. In this paper, it only discusses three denominal verbs that are commonly seen in our daily life, that is location verb, locatum verb and agent verb.2.1 The Semantic Structure of Locative verb.3.1 The Semantic Structure of Locative Verb The innovative use of denominal verbs exist massively in English. Not only they can be used in oral English but also in written language. They have the same with their parent nouns and synonym relations in semantic structure. In the translation study and research process, which attempt to translate such three speeches and observe if there is new semantic characteristic about the predicated verb in italic partial.1) Peter shelved a book on the windowsill.2) Sue breaded the fish with shredded coconut.3) Wed stand on line and wait for hours, smiling and Uncle Tomming every time a doctor or a nurse passed by. The result would be that, we all process the whole sentence very well but only the italic partial can not be translated appropriately. As “bread” “shelve” “Uncle Tom” usually appear as the noun (in particular the special noun “Uncle Tom” stands for a personal name), everybody feel quite strange about this phenomenon that the nouns serve as the verbs and dont know how to translate those sentences perfectly. Take Sentence (1) as an example, some people rely on their general knowledge and translate like this:彼得把一本书放在窗台上.But they could not translate the meaning of the verb properly. Few people think it over for a while and translate it out in order to get the general idea. But they feel at a loss when asked why they translate like this, that is to say, only they get the meaning but cannot speak it out. The Sentence (2) and Sentence (3) who can translate out are less and less. These verbs are not translated very well, where is the difficulty?For instance, the semantic relation between the verb shelve and the noun shelf is as follows邵志洪 英汉语研究与对比M 华东理工大学出版社1997 第30页:a. x Shelve y = x PUT y ON <SHELF>i.e. Peter shelved a book.= Peter put a book on the shelf.So the semantic structure of locative verb can be summed up as follows:a.x VN y = x PUT y ON <N>, VN-名源性方位动词N-母体名词This kind of verbs like this are as follows: achieve, bag, bank, barrel, bed, bench, berth, billet, bin, bottle, box, cage, can, case, cellar, coop, corral, crate, ditch, dock, dry dock, encase, enthrone, entomb, file, fork, front-page, garage, grain, greenhouse, groove, ground, hangar, house, ice, imprison, index, jail, jar, jug, kennel, land, lot, net, package, pasture, peg, pen, pillory, pocket, pot, reel, sheathe, shelter, shoulder, skewer, snare, spindle, spit, spool, stable, string, table, terrace, thread, tin, trap, tree, tub, tube, warehouse.3.2 The Semantic Structure of Locatum VerbThere are also differences and similarities between saddle and shelve. Lets compare the two sentences:a.He saddled the horse. (他给马上了鞍)b.He shelved a book. （ 他把书放在书架上）So the semantic structure of the locatum verb saddle can be described as follows:X saddle y = x PUT <SADDLE> ON yi.e. He saddled the horse= He put the saddle on the horse.So we can describe the semantic structure of locatum verbs like this:a.x VN y = x PUT <N> ON yVN名源性动体动词N母体名词3.3 The Semantic Structure of Agent VerbIn this kind of words, parent nouns act as agent character. It may refer to ordinary noun that describes a person, such as pilot, butcher. Take Clark & Clark (1979) for reference, the semantic structure is as follows:x VN y = x do to y the act one would normally expect N to do to y (x对y做了某个动作或某件事，而这个动作或这件事通常被认为是N对y做的。也就是说，x 对y 的所作所为就是N 对y通常的所作所为)VN名源性施事动词N母体名词i.e. John butcher the cow.= John did to the cow the act that one would normally expect a butcher to do to a cow.译文：约翰像屠夫一样残忍地宰了那头牛。We also have this kind of agent verbs: A. Profession: butcher the cow, jockey the horse, police the park, nurse the patient, doctor the victim, pilot the ship, shepherd the sheep, author the book, model the clothes, tailor the suit;B. Special Role: monitor the exam, referee the game, champion the cause, father the children, mother the children, chair the department, and boss the employee;C. Animal: fox the people, parrot every word, dog the escape, hound the politician, and buffalo the audience;IV The Practical Value towards Denominal VerbsThere is an old saying in England, brevity is the soul of writing (简洁是文章的灵魂)，that is to say, the speech and writing should be more short and precise. Denominal verbs are the outcome of this request. It has lively, novel, short, and sprightly significance in style. Looking from the word formation, the procedure of noun which serves as a verb can be called incorporation. The so -called incorporation refers to some ingredient in a sentence turns into a part of the other. It may make you express the thought with few words by a more succinct way.4.1 Brevity of TranslationBesides the consideration of expression efficiency, there are also other reasons about the noun with functions as the verb. There are two main reasons: firstly, the present existing single verb is insufficient; secondly, but is for cause, the language and writing obtain more exciting effect ( to turn nouns into verbs in the hope of achieving more exciting prose)王宗炎 辨义为翻译之本A杨自俭 刘学云主编 翻译新论C 武汉湖北教育出版社2003 第23-31页.The former is a fact, the latter is humans psychological request. Its very easy to satisfy the former to make a batch of new words to be possible. But it is a problem that all creates them and messes up in the end. The most ideal procedure which we turn the old words into an innovative meaning also can obtain fresh feeling to have the economy to take into account. Especially the kind of efficiency is useful in a new technology field. The new scene appears unceasingly in the technology field, but its new verbs are not sufficient to describe them. In English, the verb probably accounts for 8.6% of the total quantity, while the noun reaches as high as 60%. Therefore, the noun has become the biggest fountainhead naturally which the verb borrows. For instance, there is a phenomenon that large quantities of terms which turn nouns into verbs in computer field, such as key in the data, flowchart the program, program the system, output the results, and CRT the trace and so forth. Just like Clark & Clark (1979) predicted that the new technology has become the main responsible party of general denominal verbs (such as zerox, telephone, wore, radio, paperclip) nowadays. The use of a single verb caused the expression of complex scene more economical. The expression of efficiency also obtained obviously the repayment which should have. First is precise. Take a medical worker as an example, “autoclave the scalpels” is more precise than “sterilize the scalpels”, moreover, it does not need to ponder (Clark & Clark, 1979). Lets have a look at and compare these sentences.a.Remember to cork the bottle.b.Remember to put the cork back into the neck of the bottle.c.Please microwave the chicken first.d.Please warm up the chicken in the microwave oven first.e.The police sirened the car to a stop.f.The police caused the car to a stop by sirening the police car.According to these sentences, It is known that “a、c、e” is more precise than “b、d、f”.4.2 Vivid of the TranslationSecond is vivid. Look at this sentence. The mayor tried to Richard Nixon the tapes of the meeting. Regardless of a man who writes political comment uses the substitution Richard Nixon to have great effect. That will reappear a politician image who cover the truth in human brain when mentioned Nixon. It forms an image effect even if long writing cannot achieve, the use of proper noun can be called adding the fishing touching the pen.So no matter in oral English or written language; no matter in the dialogue or monologue; no matter in the advertisement, news report or literary work; no matter in social science field or natural science field, the denominal verbs are applied widely and the importance of their translation can imagine.V The Translation of Denominal VerbsYou have understood the semantic structure of “shelve”, try to translate three sentences within preface.Peter shelved a book on the windowsill.This sentence seems not to translate as follows:“彼得把书放在书架上”。If translate like this, it can say:Peter shelved a book on the windowsill.= Peter shelved a book.Its obviously wrong! After all, there is phrase on “the windowsill”. So how should we translate it? It has mentioned another meaning of “shelve”, that is, it means a direction which can be a similar thing like shelf.There are similarities between the words “windowsill” and “shelf” in shape, all have a long but narrow horizontal plane. So you can say “a windowsill is a shelf-like object”. There are also similarities in function and all can support an object.shelf < support (支撑物)