A study of the typological transitivity systems in oriental and occidental languages: A comparison of relational processes in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Abstract

In this dissertation, I aim, firstly, to make a comparison of the transitivity systems of two occidental languages (English and Spanish) and two oriental languages (Japanese and Chinese). More concretely, this dissertation will focus on relational processes. I also aim to study the problems of translating different relational processes in Spanish, Japanese and Chinese as the second research aim by the typological transitivity system in the area of systemic functional linguistics. The reason for choosing relational processes is based on two concerns. First, compared to other types, in relational processes, there are a number of typical verbs like have, be, etc., which are very common. Secondly, the dissimilarities of relational processes in the languages concerned are supposed to be more obvious, and the problems are particularly worth analyzing.