Verb-resultative Constructions in Modern Chinese and Their English and Arabic Translations: A Study of the Essential Difference Between the Three Languages

Verb-resultative constructions are a kind of typical expression of resultative complement in modern Chinese. Through a contrastive study of such Chinese constructions and their English and Arabic translations from the perspective of functional syntax, this article aims to reveal the features of the English and Arabic translations of the Chinese verb-resultative constructions which take on simple forms, but express complicated meanings. It is found that English and Arabic tend to make the complicated meanings of Chinese verb-resultative constructions explicit or implicit in their translations. Furthermore, the research results show that the differences in the encoding of similar situations between the three languages are closely related to their categorizations, which have a coupling relationship with the basic philosophical thinking modes of the three nationalities. That is, Chinese is featured by the integration between subject and object, English by the separation between subject and object, and Arabic by a higher degree of separation between subject and object than English. This difference in the degree of separation or integration between subject and object should be the essential difference between the three languages.