Language serves to deliver meanings, but there are many ways of expressing the same meaning because sentence forms are varied according to the discourse situation where the language is used. Translation involves rendering one form of language into ano...
Language serves to deliver meanings, but there are many ways of expressing the same meaning because sentence forms are varied according to the discourse situation where the language is used. Translation involves rendering one form of language into another while retaining the original meaning. As such, translation concerns sentence forms. To choose the best sentence form in a certain language in the process of translation, one must consider the discourse situation.
Pronouns are among the parts of speech that have different functions in English and Korean. In English, pronouns are used to refer to a entity that has already been introduced in the given context. On the contrary, in Korean, to express an already-introduced entity, either a pronoun or an ellipsis can be used. It can thus be inferred that the functions and usages of pronouns in the two aforementioned languages do not coincide with each other. This means that when translating a pronoun in Korean, one has to choose which language form to use. Previous studies suggested that Korean tends not to use pronouns but full noun phrases or ellipses after analyzing the number of pronouns used in a text. Korean nonetheless has a pronoun system, and it is not certain which noun phrase in the text can be omitted. In English-Korean translation, the pronouns in the English text are not always omitted, and ellipses are selectively used.
Information structure is a theory that concerns choosing language forms by analyzing the given/new information, the topic/comment relations, and the speaker-hearer interaction in the text. A past research work tried to explain the use of the ellipsis in Korean by looking at the information structure of the sentences that contained ellipses. The author of the work suggested that the continued topics of the sentences can be omitted. After analyzing the Korean texts, though, it was found that the noun phrases in the comment parts can also be omitted. There is also a theory that states that the information given in texts can be omitted. This can explain the use of an ellipsis with the noun phrase in the comment. As such, it is more appropriate than the topic ellipsis theory for explaining the use of the ellipsis in Korean. As a text narrative develops, however, once omitted, the given information reappears. This means that this theory does not adequately describe the proper use of the ellipsis in Korean. What this theory does not consider is the fact that the status of the given information can change as the text is developed. As no one can restore every word and the entire discourse situation, there is a point at which the given information will lose its given quality.
This suggests that texts consist of sub-structures and that these structures can be used to explain the ellipsis in Korean, as well as the explicit expression of a noun phrase. Under this assumption, the stage is set for a thread of texts where the given information should be omitted. To say that sentences are at the same stage means that their points of view and temporal settings do not change. When the stage is set as one unit where the given structures can remain, the problem that some pronouns of the ST can be omitted even when the stage has changed arises. Thus, the structure was extended to the subtopic unit, and when the stage constitutes one subtopic, the given information can be omitted. But the ellipsis is not as necessary as a stage unit.
This also suggests one instance where the aforementioned rule regarding the use of the ellipsis does not apply: that where an argument obtains contrastiveness. As contrastiveness indicates that the contrasted matter is being emphasized, it conveys the correction of the hearer's knowledge or implies other meanings.
，韩语论文，韩语论文 |
