Contrastive Rhetoric

A large number of researches [5][6][32], called contrast rhetoric and contrast linguistics, standard the difference of writing features between Chinese and English.

These studies focus on four directions covering sentence structure, organization, topics as well as figures-of-speech. Sentence structure compares the difference of syntax and its structure. Topics and organization studies the difference in thinking and plot skill. Although organization can be analyzed at the levels of both paragraph and essay, it will be treated as the same in this study. Figures-of-speech compare the difference for the usage and categories of figures-of-speech between Chinese and English writings. Below, we will discuss the issues separately.

2.2.1 Sentence structure

Many studies pointed out that the syntax in Chinese is more flexible and loose than that in English. Jaio [24] noted three fundamental differences. First, the sentence structure in English can be perceived as a tree structure while the sentence structure in Chinese can be perceived as a linear structure. Second, sentences in English emphasize hypotaxis which refers to grammatical subordination while sentences in Chinese focus on parataxis which refers to grammatical coordination. Parataxis often places sentences side by side without any connectives while hypotaxis uses word to express the temporal, logical and syntactic relations between sentences. Third, the sentence boundary in English is very crisp. As long as the subject and predicate appears, the sentence is basically complete. By contrast, the amount of information in Chinese sentence is not strictly constrained. A sentence is complete only when a sequence of actions is over. Each of the long sequence of actions can appear as a complete sentence or short sentence or a single action or modifier. Hence it is much harder to identify the boundary of a sentence.

Lee and Zeng [33] pointed out that the ordering of three basic elements (subject, verb and object) and the type of tags show no fundamental difference in both Chinese and English discourse. However, the constituents may be very different. For instance, the verb and the adjective can be used as subject in Chinese while the verb and adjective have to be changed into infinitive or participle before it can be used as a subject in English. The same restriction also appears in the predicates. In the case of structure changes, Chinese can move the predicate to the beginning of a sentence to form a derived sentence. By contrast, in English, there is no such pattern.

The above discussion illustrates that the Chinese syntax is quite flexible and more diversity in patterns than that in English. Hence, developing a powerful parser for Chinese is a quite difficult task.

2.2.2 Topics

One writing requirement is to select materials and the illustration has to be consistent with the topic. However the material selection is quite different due to the difference of East West cultures. Chinese students often quote authoritative argument and classical article, and seldom express personal opinion and feelings. The usage of rhetoric is quite indirect and moderate. By contrast, western students like to present many evidences to support their arguments or viewpoints. Critical and logical

discussions are quite important for English writings. The observation indicates that the material selections of a Chinese essay should not be judged by the English automatic scoring system because of the different perspectives.

2.2.3 Organization

Many studies noted a fundamental difference of discourse organization in Chinese and English writing. In particular, Kaplan [25] pointed out that the organization of discourse in English writing often appears as a linear sequence. By contrast, the discourse organization in Chinese writing often appears like a spiral pattern. A good organization in English writing starts with a topical sentence and develops various arguments in succeeding sentences to illustrate the topic. On the other hand, a good organization in Chinese will discuss the topic from various perspectives and repeatedly illustrate the topic with various semantic expressions without word connection. Hu [21] further observes either the last paragraph or the end of the middle paragraph often contains highlight in Chinese.

Some studies made a further analysis on the difference of the discourse organizations. Zeng [58] pointed out that grammatical framework connecting subject and verb does not exist in Chinese writing. Instead of using connectives for combining sentences, it uses the sequence and logical order to connect sentences.

Many times, topic idea is not evident in a paragraph. Instead it likely contains an invisible or a subconscious topic idea. On the other hand, the principles of organization for paragraph and discourse are consistent. They all submit to coherence, completeness. Hence, topic sentence, concluding sentence and supporting sentence can be seen quite often. The tree structure of discourse [36] also shows that the coherence of discourse in English tends towards the relationship between main clause and subjective clause. By contrast, the structure of Chinese discourse tends towards parallel sequence.

Although, effective paragraph all stresses unity, coherence, and completeness in both English and Chinese writing, the different thinking process behavior from the east and west culture would naturally lead to distinction in their own discourse. For instance, Scollon et al. [47] remarks that people in western cultures use a deductive method of reasoning or argument, while people in eastern cultures use an inductive method of reasoning. This indicates that human grader from different cultures may give different judgments for the topic organization.

2.2.4 Figure-of-Speech

The usage of figure-of-speech is an important factor for high quality of writing.

Although there are many common usages of figures-of-speech in Chinese and English writing, each language has its own unique figures-of-speech. Bai and Shi [3] studied the differences of figures-of-speech in Chinese and English. Of 16 figures-of-speech used in Chinese and 26 figures-of-speech in English, they each have 6 figures-of-speech not observed in another language. Even, for the similar figures-of-speech, the occasions and skill to use it are different. Hence, the grading factors may be different in using the figures-of-speech to judge essays.