Chinese Syntax and Cognitive Style

FAIN: FT-12350-75

Alfred H. Bloom
Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390)

To explore a hypothesized link between Chinese syntax and Chinese cognitive style, as a specific instance of a more general hypothesis that the underlying structural patterns in the syntax of a language influence the thought processes of native speakers of that language by selectively highlighting and deemphasizing specific modes of reasoning as opposed to others. Two months will be spent in Taipei, Taiwan to complete a transformational analysis of the processes by which Chinese syntax establishes coordinate, subordinate and implicational relationships; and secondly an investigation into whether or not the marked degree of ambiguity, which appears from a Western perspective to be inherent in Chinese syntax corresponds to their preference of style.