As is mentioned previously, a good rationale is expected to show its relevance to the research objective by explaining relevant concepts or theories. Also, the different parts within the rationale itself need to be joined with each other coherently.

Read the rationale below. Try to find out how it is relevant to the research objective and how each section of it is connected with the others by answering the following questions. Please write your answers in the space provided.

2. Rationale

　 2.1 Negation

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation (A S Hornby et al., 1988: 755) defines negation as “(opposite of affirmation) act of denying”, “absence of any positive or real quality or meaning”. In addition, negation is not absolute, but relative. Affirmation is also negation in a way, i.e. negation of negation or double negation. Obviously, the definition of negation has some links with philosophy as well as linguistics, logics, and mathematics. This paper will study negation from two linguistic angles: negative and negative sentence.

　2.2 Negatives

Negatives are referred specifically to those words implying the sense of negation in linguistics (Zhao Shikai, 1999: 229). As Zhong Shukong (1983: 116-117) mentions, some linguists have the view that English negatives can be classified into five categories: 1) full negatives, e.g. no, not, none, never, nothing, nobody, nowhere, neither, nor, etc.; 2) absolute negatives, e.g. not at all, by no means, in no way, nothing short of, etc.; 3) partial negatives, e.g. not every, not all, not much, not many, not always, etc.; 4) semi-negatives, e.g. hardly, scarcely, seldom, barely, few, little, etc.; 5) words with negative implication, e.g. fail, refrain, refuse, neglect, without, beyond, until, unless, lest, ignorant, absence, instead of, other than, except, rather than, etc. Affixes such as un-, dis-, de-, non-, anti-, -less can be used to constitute negatives because they all suggest negation, e.g. unimportant, discourage, nongovernmental, antiterrorism, careless, etc. 非- (fei) ，未- (wei) ，反- (fan) ，无- (wu) etc. in Chinese can be also used to constitute negatives because they all suggest negation, e.g. 非军事化 (demilitarization), 反革命 (counterrevolution), 未知数 (unknown), 无产阶级 (proletarian). Obviously, this classification is built on the meaning difference of negatives. Basically, there is little difference between English and Chinese in terms of the first two categories of negatives; but a marked difference in the mode of thinking and speaking in terms of the last three categories. Zhou Zhipei et al (1995: 6) point out that there is no such semi-negative in Chinese.

On the other hand, although they all express negation, English negatives have disparity in respect of negative form (Randolph Quirk et al., 1989: 1077-1079). The first three types of negatives mentioned above, i.e. full negatives, absolute negatives and partial negatives, indicate the sense of negation directly with clear negative form, while the last two, i.e. semi-negatives and words with negative implication, imply negative meaning indirectly without negative form. Therefore, based on this analysis, English negatives can also be broken up into two kinds in terms of negative form: direct negatives and indirect negatives.

In addition, in terms of part of speech, English negatives can be used as negative pronouns, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions, acting as subject, predicate, object, predicative, attribute, adverbial in English sentences (Zhao Shikai, 1999: 229-230). For example, negative pronouns includes “nobody”, “none”, “nothing”, “neither”, etc.; negative nouns “absence”, “failure”, “ignorance”, “loss”, “denial”, “refusal” etc., negative verbs “fail”, “refuse”, “avoid”, “lack”, “miss”, “exclude”, “prevent”, “deny”, etc.; negative adjectives “ignorant”, “poor”, “strange”, “bad”, “no” etc.; negative adverbs “not”, “never”, “no”, “nowhere”, “little”, “seldom”, “hardly”, “rarely”, “scarcely”, “barely”, etc.; negative prepositions “but”, “unlike”, “without”, “beyond”, “above”, etc, and negative conjunctions “unless”, “except”, “lest” “neither”, “nor”, etc. In Chinese there are only two negative verbs: “无” (wu) and “没（有）” (mei) (you)，while in English there is no direct single negative counterpart meaning possession (Zhao Shikai, 1999: 230). Chinese has such negative adverbs as “不” (bu)， “没（有）” (mei) (you)，“别” (bie)， “未” (wei)， “甭” (beng)， “休” (xiu)， “莫” (mo)， “非” (fei)， “勿” (wu)， “否” (fou), etc (Zhao Shikai, 1999:230).

Although there are many negatives in English, the most frequently used negatives are “not” and “no” (Chen Ping, 1985: 262). “Not” is an adverb modifying verbs, adjectives and adverbs, while “no” can be used as an adjective modifying nouns as well as an adverb. Moreover, when “not” is used to negate the relation between the subject and predicate, the predicate changes in the grammatical form sometimes. This can be exemplified clearly in the sentences “The rabbit ran away” and “The rabbit did not run away”. In Chinese language there are three most frequently used negatives: “不”(bu), “别”(bie) and “没（有）”(mei) (you) (Chen Ping, 1985: 262). The first two are both adverbs which can not modify nouns, but the last one can be used as an adverb and verb. In other words, there is no negative adjective like “no” in Chinese and basically no negative can be the modifier of noun.

To sum up, English negatives have different types in terms of meaning, form and part of speech respectively, which form diversity of English negative sentences. Moreover, although there are many negatives in both English and Chinese, differences can be found between them in category, quantity, scope, etc, which leads to disparity in negative sentences between English and Chinese.

　2.3 Negative Sentences

English language has four basic sentence patterns: declarative sentence, exclamatory sentence, interrogative sentence and imperative sentence and they all have negative structures, but the negation of declarative sentences is the main object of the syntax study. Hence this research will focus on the negation of declarative sentences.

According to Zhao Shikai (1999: 226), English negative sentences are defined as statements that contain not less than one word suggesting negative meaning. In fact, more than one negative are employed at the same time in some English sentences. For instance, a double negative sentence is“No one ever said anything to nobody”.

Negative sentence can be classified as general negative sentence (GNS) and special negative sentence (SNS) according to the object of negation in terms of sentence form (Chen Ping, 1985: 274). In the former, negatives negate only predicate verbs of the main clause or the relation between subject and predicate of the main clause, while in the latter, negatives negate other sentence elements instead of predicates, e.g. subject, object, predicative and adverbial. For example, the sentence “I do not like it” is a GNS because the negative adverb “not” negates the predicate verb like; the sentence “No difficulty can defeat us” is a subject negation sentence or SNS because the negative adjective “no” only negates the subject “difficulty”; the sentence “She has neither books” is an object negation sentence or SNS because the negative adjective “neither” just modifies the object ” books”; the sentence “This is an unimportant thing” is a predicative negative sentence or SNS because the negative adjective “unimportant” just modifies the predicative “thing”; the sentence “Not surprisingly, they lived in Toronto” is an adverbial negative sentence or SNS because the negative adverb “not” only modifies the adverb “surprisingly”. However, in Chinese, GNS is the main form of negative sentences (Zhou Zhipei et al, 1995: 6). In English, if the predicate verb of an affirmative sentence is modified by negative “not” to shape a GNS, its form are often changed with the help of auxiliary verbs, e.g. “I came with smile” and “I did not come with smile”. In Chinese, nevertheless, it is not the case.

According to the analysis above, it is not difficult to tell whether a simple sentence, which consists of one main clause, is a GNS or SNS based on the definition of GNS or SNS, but as for the complex sentence, which is composed of one or more subordinate clauses as well as a main clause, the identification of GNS or SNS should depend on the main clause no matter how many negative words subordinate clauses contain. That is to say, if a negative is used in the main clause, then the sentence is a GNS, even though there is a negative in the subordinate clause; otherwise it is an SNS if a negative appears only in the subordinate clause.

English general and special negative sentences cannot be separated from each other, but interrelated. A GNS can contain one or more special negative clauses stemming from SNS, for instance, “I don’t suppose that it is unimaginable”. Also, an SNS can involve one or more general negative clauses originating from GNS, for example, “It’s impossible that you could not defeat him”. Moreover, general and special negative sentences can be inter-convertible sometimes without changing the original meaning. For example, sentences “It is not touchable” and “It is untouchable”.

　2.4 Negative Scope

In English language, it is common that the meaning of a negative sentence is often different as the position of negatives in the sentence changes (Randolph Quirk et al., 1989: 1088-1089). For instance, the sentence “I definitely didn’t speak to her” means that it’s definite that I didn’t speak to her. Obviously, the negative “not” only negates the part of the sentence starting after the word “definitely”. When “not” is put in front of “definitely”, i.e. “I didn’t definitely speak to her”, the sentence, however, implies that it’s not definite that I spoke to her because the part influenced by “not” changed, that is, starting from “definitely”. These two sentences have quite different meaning from each other because the scope of negation alters in the sentence despite the fact that they are all GNSs. Therefore negative scope has direct and great influence on the appropriate understanding of English negative sentences.

According to Chen Ping (1985: 274), negative scope is referred to the extent that negative meaning covers. Further, he points out that negative scope in both English and Chinese is basically subjected to relative position of negatives against other words. On the average, negative scope in English extends from negatives themselves to the end of the sentence (Randolph Quirk et al., 1989: 1088). Chen Ping (1985: 274) agrees by claiming that in principle the part on the right of negatives is involved by negative scope, but the part on the left is not, which is applicable to both English and Chinese. Here are two examples given above: “I definitely didn’t speak to her” and “I didn’t definitely speak to her”. In the former, the negative scope starts after “definitely”, i.e. from “not” to the end of the sentence, while in the latter, the negative scope includes “definitely”, i.e. from “not” till the end of the sentence. Therefore, these two sentences have different negative implications, although they are composed of same words. In the negative sentence “The researchers have not organized the forum to compare ideas on the controversy”, the negative scope contains the adverbial of purpose at the end of the sentence, i.e. “to compare ideas on the controversy”. However, it is not always true that negative scope includes adverbials at the end of the sentence in English according to Randolph Quirk et al. (1989: 1088). For example, “He doesn’t know me, unfortunately”. In this negative sentence, as an adverbial of result at the end of the sentence, “unfortunately” is beyond the negative scope. In other words, the negative scope of this sentence is from “not” to “me”.

　2.5 Transferred Negation

In A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, transferred negation is defined as transfer of negatives involving semantically in subordinate clauses (generally that- clauses) to main clauses (Randolph Quirk et al., 1989: 1427). Verbs that are able to attract negatives or transfer negation can be classified semantically into two groups: 1) opinion: anticipate, be supposed to, believe, calculate, expect, figure, imagine, reckon, suppose, think; 2) perspective: appear, seem, feel as if, look as if, sound as if. For instance, “He didn’t imagine that they would say anything” (He imagined that they wouldn’t say anything) and “It doesn’t seem that they can get their money back” (It seems that they can’t get their money back). Transferred negation is often used especially in informal English language; nevertheless, this phenomenon is seldom seen in Chinese language.

In terms of negation form, the object of negation is changed, i.e. from subordinate clauses to predicate verbs of main clauses. In other words, transferred negation can be regarded as formal conversion of SNS into GNS because some predicate verbs of main clauses attract negatives (Chen Ping, 1985: 269). Hence, transferred negation is also called as negative attraction, negative raising or negative transportation by some linguists such as Zhao Shikai (1999: 243).

Based on the analysis of transferred negation, it is can be concluded that form and meaning of negation do not always correspond to each other in English negative sentences.

　2.6 Strategies of Translating English Negative Sentences 

Quoting Eugene A. Nida, Meng Qingsheng (2003: 7) points out, “Translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and second in terms of style”. Based on the above instruction, translation means faithful representation of the meaning or style of source language with receptor language or target language in an appropriate way.

In order to translate English negative sentence appropriately, some principles should be observed. Fan Zhongying (1994:55) suggests three principles for a good translation : 1) meaning transference — representing the original meaning of source language; 2) acceptability — readers’ comprehension of the translated version; 3) similarity — almost the same as the source language in terms of form, style, structure, rhetoric etc. “Meaning transference” and “acceptability” take priority over “similarity”, although the first two principles are equally important. On the other hand, the higher the similarity is, the better the translation is on condition that “meaning transference” and “acceptability” are achieved.

In order to realize adequate and accurate representation of English negation, translation methods should be properly employed. According to Zhou Zhipei et al (1995: 6), subject, object, predicative etc. can be negated as well as predicate in English language, while in Chinese language, predicate negation is the main form of negation; therefore, when translated, generally, English negative sentences will be transformed into Chinese predicate negative sentences. That is to say, there are GNS and various SNSs in English grammar; nevertheless, GNS is often used in Chinese when expressing negative implication and SNS is seldom. So English GNS and SNS are usually translated into Chinese GNS and sometimes into Chinese SNS. In other words, English negative sentences can be rendered into Chinese negative sentences, which translation strategy is called by the paper as assimilation because this strategy preserves negation form as much as possible.

However, because English and Chinese have different cultures and traditions as well as belong to different language families, assimilation strategy may lead to unnatural or unacceptable Chinese translation while keeping negation form. On this occasion, some English negative sentences have to be rendered into Chinese affirmative sentences to better transfer its original meaning in an appropriate way, which translation strategy is called by the paper as dissimilation because this strategy do not maintain original negation form.

Although they are different translation strategies from English to Chinese, dissimilation and assimilation have different advantages and disadvantages. To some extent, they all adhere to three principles mentioned above for a good translation put forward by Fan Zhongying.