从语法隐喻理论析名物化在法律语言中的功能及运用-外国语言学与应用语言学专业论文.docx

Introduction A marked feature of English texts is their informational density and high degree of nominalization. Nouns are used in hyphenated pairs or dyads, and sometimes in triads, tetrads, and pentads. Nouns are used as adjectives without change of the form, and they are even used as verbs, with or without being suffixed. It seems to be a received wisdom of the linguistic community that the English language is characterized by its noun-tendency. Solan (125) and Gibbons (109) have claimed a tendency in English of “preponderance of nouns over verbs”; Liu Miqing holds in his CE-EC Contrastive Studies and Translation that “(t)he English language has the tendency to use nouns and prepositions, while the Chinese language verbs” (42). Lian Shuneng concludes that “the English language shows a tendency to employ nouns more frequently, which results in a static narration; however, the Chinese language is inclined to resort to verbs rather than nouns, and as a result, its narration is dynamic” (87). He also determines that “(n)ominalization often occurs in the English language” as is witnessed by passing remarks on the preponderance of nouns over verbs in English, which mostly refers to nominalization. Nominalization is characterized by constrictive meaning and is an important means to make complex principal and subordinate structures. Since the agent is usually covert and there is a lack of modifying elements, nominals tend to be of objective, solemn and precise style that characterizes social science works, official articles, book reviews, business letters, legal documents, etc., among which legal documents are typical. Legal documents typically specify the obligations as well as rights of the parties concerned, as such it is necessary to employ authoritative language that is by far more formal than everyday language. “Legal English is the most formal in all English styles” (Hou Weirui 217). Therefore, words, phrases, and sentence patterns full of formal and normative fl