These two different styles of thinking have exerted their respective impact on the syntactical structures of English and Chinese. Due to the influence of analytical thinking, the English language is endowed with distinct changes of word forms, varied grammatical forms and flexible sentence orders; In contrast, words almost do not change in form in Chinese and grammatical requirements are usually met by lexical means. What is more, phrases and clauses are usually arranged in chronological order or in logical sequence. Parataxis in the Chinese language best manifests this phenomenon: propositions are coordinatively arranged one after another with no connectives indicating the syntactic relations between them. Chinese sentences, in most styles of the language, tend to be short and seemingly loosely connected with connecting words omitted, but the meaning can be decided from the context. Oftentimes, certain members of a sentence (usually the subject of a clause or the sentence) are omitted, and the sentence is still intelligible to Chinese readers.
E.g.:
(2)我买了六支钢笔，(这六支钢笔)一共三十元，(我)拿回家一看，(这六支钢笔)都用过的了。
I bought six pens for 30 yuan. When taking home, I found they were used.
With the concealed or omitted subjects of the clauses(“这六支钢笔”and“我”)，the original Chinese,
which can be taken as one sentence, poses no difficulty in understanding to a Chinese reader. Moreover, no connectives are found in the sentence and the meaning as well as the chronological sequence is self-evident from the context. In contrast, the translated English version, which consists of two sentences, cannot do without these omitted subjects, and a time-marker "
when" is also added to indicate the time sequence as well as the subordinate relationship between the time-adverbial clause and the main clause.
3.3 Subject-centered Thinking vs. Object-centered Thinking
It’s generally accepted that Chinese culture is subject-oriented while Western culture centers on the object. Laozi，founder of Taoism, held that "
The ways of men are conditioned by those of earth; the ways of earth by those of heaven; the ways of heaven by those of Tao; and the ways of Tao by the self-so". Mencius also said, "I know everything about the universe". “Qian Mu，a master of Chinese national culture, made his penetrating remark that Chinese culture, with its emphasis on humanitarianism, is human-oriented in essence, and has given birth to the subject-oriented thinking style of the Chinese nation. That’s to say, center on themselves in making observation, analysis and reasoning people.” [19]
In Western culture, however, people take the objects and nature as the center of their research, which places great importance on the observation and study of the objective with the absolute authority nature. Westerners hold that man is endowed and transcendental power over nature and is, on the strength of his intelligence and science, to conquer and transform nature and put nature at his service. The proverb "knowledge is strength" best illustrates this perseverant spirit of pursuit and exploration, which takes the universe as its to-be-conquered antagonist. Such notion has fathered the object-oriented style of thinking, namely the objective nature is the focus of all man’s exploratory activities, his observation, analysis and reasoning.
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