Articles

CHINESE AS A PARATACTIC LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper attempts to outline the typological property of Chinese as a paratactic language, as distinguished from a hypotactic language like English. In a paratactic language, connective elements are often optional or unnecessary while the opposite is true in a hypotactic language. It is proposed that 'parataxis' be added to the clustering of distinctive properties that constitute a more general typological parameter which distinguishes Chinese as a discourse-oriented language from English as a sentence-oriented language. It is also argued that the recognition of parataxis as a distinctive typological property of Chinese will shed some light on the problem of the so-called 'double-subject' construction, and will cast some doubt on the traditional characterization of an analytical language like Chinese.

How to Cite

Yu, N., (1993) “CHINESE AS A PARATACTIC LANGUAGE”, Journal of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching 1, 1-15.

1148

Views

1276

Downloads

Share

Authors

Ning Yu (University of Arizona)

Download

Issue

Publication details

Dates

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • PDF: f9fd9cc7ff298e4cc0bfadf31e32f374