Influence of Ellipsis Differences between English and Chinese on Students' English Writing

Ellipsis of introduction is a common phenomenon in any language, which follows the economic principle in language, that is, people try to use fewer and more labor-saving language units and convey more information with less power in the process of using language to communicate. Because there are considerable differences between English and Chinese in cultural traditions, cognitive habits and rhetorical methods, the frequency and composition of ellipsis are also very different. Ellipsis in Chinese can appear in various styles. In contrast, ellipsis in English is relatively limited, mainly in spoken language and rarely in written language. In addition, Chinese ellipsis is omnibearing, which can be subject, object, predicate, preposition, conjunction and so on. And ellipsis is complete, as Cheng Yumin said, in Chinese, all components can be omitted. The components that can be omitted in English are much more limited, and even if they are omitted, they are accompanied by some formal markers, that is, when some components are omitted, some structural markers will always be left, indicating that sentences are still grammatical after being omitted (Cai Jigang, 2003).

Second, the reasons for the differences between English and Chinese ellipsis

(1) Chinese is a topical language, while English is a subject-predicate structure language. Most subjects in Chinese sentences can be regarded as topics, and the function of predicates is to explain, describe and comment on the subject topics. As Lv Shuxiang said, China people are used to putting forward the most important word in his mind as the subject of a sentence, and then saying the rest of the words in the original order as the predicates of the sentence. In this way, it is normal to omit the object of discussion when a topic (often played by the topic owner) comes out and the following sentences are explained. Moreover, because the sentence embodies the subject-predicate relationship, there is no limitation of subject and predicate in tense, number and meaning, which makes ellipsis more convenient.

He is really a language genius. He is proficient in five foreign languages and can speak dozens of dialects. As the whole sentence revolves around him, the subject he is omitted before the last two sentences. After omission, there is no sense of discontinuity, but the expression is more concise and compact.

Different from Chinese, English is a language with subject-predicate structure. Traditional English grammar defines a sentence as a language unit with a subject and a predicate. A sentence must have a logical subject and a logical predicate to express an idea. Therefore, subject and predicate are indispensable in a sentence.

(2) Chinese is a language that emphasizes parataxis, while English is a language that emphasizes hypotaxis.

As a language that emphasizes parataxis, Chinese sentences mainly rely on context and semantics to express their logical relations. Readers can make extensive use of the context and their own social knowledge to infer the omitted content. For example:

He has a student who works in the government. (We) have informed (the student) that (the student) will arrive tomorrow. Every sentence in this passage is secretly changing the subject, but the meaning is clear. In parataxis-oriented Chinese, in order to make sentences fluent and coherent, we can abandon formal constraints and omit all irrelevant elements, including subjects, objects, related words and function words that do not affect the meaning.

Compared with Chinese, English, as a hypotaxis-oriented language, needs to express its meaning not only through words and sentences themselves, but also through the change and application of language forms. Therefore, language form is very important for the organization and meaning of sentences. Simply put, hypotaxis English refers to the syntactic relationship in which sentence components are connected by conjunctions at the sentence level, and at the super-sentence level, sentences are connected by conjunctions into paragraphs, so the connections between clauses are mostly expressed directly by conjunctions (including coordinate conjunctions and subordinate conjunctions) or relational words (including relative pronouns, adverbs, connecting pronouns and adverbs).

(C) the impact of ellipsis differences on writing

After classifying some common language errors in students' writing teaching, the author finds that these errors seem to be caused by the lack of grammatical knowledge, but in fact they are all caused by the negative transfer of language caused by the differences between English and Chinese ellipsis. For example:

1. String sentence is wrong. This kind of mistake seems to be the misuse of punctuation. In fact, most of them are because parataxis-oriented Chinese often omits related words in order to make the language concise and fluent, which leads to students' mistakes in English writing. He spoke slowly and loudly so that everyone in the classroom could hear him clearly. The students' expressions are: he speaks slowly and his voice is loud, so everyone in the classroom can hear him clearly. Because the connectives expressing the results are omitted in Chinese expression, the proper expression should be: he speaks slowly and loudly, and everyone in the classroom can hear him clearly.

2. The subject is missing. This error is mainly due to the fact that the actors in Chinese expressions can often be omitted. I finally finished my homework. This sentence omits me as an actor, which will make students express as follows: My homework is finally finished. Another example is that our classroom can accommodate 100 students. The students said: Our classroom can accommodate 100 students.

3. Subject and predicate are inconsistent. As mentioned above, English with subject-predicate structure emphasizes the consistency of subject and predicate, while Chinese with topic structure reflects the relationship between topic and comment, without limitation. Therefore, students often ignore the importance of subject-predicate agreement in writing. For example, I ran home because my family was waiting for me.

4. Hang the error. In Chinese, which emphasizes parataxis, the subject can often be omitted, while in English, if the subject is to be omitted, the logical subject of the predicate verb that omits the subject must be consistent with the subject of the main sentence. This difference often causes students to make mistakes in English expression. For example, when I saw this photo, everything in my high school came back to my memory. When I was four years old, my mother began to teach me to play the piano.

The differences between English and Chinese ellipsis have a great influence on students' English expression, not only at the sentence level, but also in paragraphs and chapters outside the sentence level. Limited to space, I don't give examples here.

From the above analysis, we can see that the difference between English and Chinese ellipsis is the result of different thinking, which is a big obstacle in foreign language learning. It will lead to jokes and communication failure, so how to minimize its influence on English writing is a problem that writing teachers should consider. The author suggests: 1. Teachers can introduce some second language acquisition theories, such as language transfer theory, so that students can look at their mistakes positively, collect such expressions in students' writing, make a comparative analysis between English and Chinese, analyze the causes of negative transfer and make corrections. In order to help students consciously overcome the influence of Chinese thinking and reduce the occurrence of mistakes. 2. Ensure that students have a lot of language input. There is a close relationship between writing and reading. Ensuring sufficient language input through reading is an effective way to help students overcome the influence of Chinese thinking and improve their writing ability. The best way to increase foreign language knowledge is to live among native English speakers, followed by reading a lot. Extensive reading can not only help students broaden their writing content, but also help them get familiar with English expressions, structures, tenses, numbers and words, thus cultivating their sense of language and improving their English thinking ability. 3. Introducing rhetorical contrast between English and Chinese writing in teaching will help students understand the similarities and differences between English and Chinese articles in macro-structure layout and micro-vocabulary, which will certainly help improve their English writing level.