Abstract

Because of the many differences in daily life and in culture between Eastern and Western countries, our ways of thinking would also have great differences. This kind of differences has brought rich diversity to both Chinese and English languages. One of the aspects is that the ways of using of subjects within sentences are different between Chinese and English. To further eliminate the interference from the mother-tongue thinking during the process of translation. This essay aims to discuss the differences on the ways of using subjects between Chinese language and English language, from the aspects of characteristic, sentence structure, topic, person and impersonal, formal subjects and Subject-Verb Concord and so on. My thesis uses the speeches given by the former President of The United States Brarack Obama, and the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping. The result of this study will provide help for the translation work between the two languages in the future. 

Key words: English and Chinese subjects; difference; mother-tongue thinking; characteristic; person

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 The Meaning of the Study-1

1.2 The Significance of the Study-1

1.3 Perspective of Study-1

2 Literature Review-2

2.1 Previous Study-2

2.2 The Definition of the Subject-3

3 Methodology-3

4 Analysis of the two Data-4

    4.1 Comparison of the Characteristic of the Subjects-4

    4.2 Comparison of Sentence Structure-6

    4.3 Comparison of Topics-8

    4.4 Objective Subject and Personal Subject-9

    4.5 Special formal subject-10

    4.6 Subject-Verb Concord-11

5 Conclusion-13

References-14