Comparative Analysis of Modal Auxilia ry Verbs in English and in Chinese

Abstract

The study of modal auxiliary verbs has been done by comparing modal auxiliary verbs in English with the ones in Chinese qualitatively and quantitatively. The modals in English and in Chinese are statistically analyzed through their forms and meanings. The data consists of 50 pieces of Chinese prose with their 50 English translation versions called corpus A and 50 pieces of English prose with their Chinese translation versions called corpus B, altogether 200 articles, which represent a type of discourse that is rich in modal auxiliary verbs both in English and in Chinese. The major findings are as follows: (1) The three criteria: inversion, negation, and the use of pro-forms can be used to define both English and Chinese auxiliaries; (2) the modals of both languages can be analyzed within the same semantic categories: volition, probability, and necessity; (3) Chinese epistemic modals can have inversion patterns; (4) the negative forms of Chinese modals are more complex than those of English modals; and (5) the statistic analysis shows that the modals in probability category both in English and in Chinese are used much more often compared to the other two categories: volition and necessity and that deontic modals are used much fewer in both languages to express necessity.