Language, whether of the East or the West, serves solely as a communication means. But the languages of different nations have vastly different characteristics. The Chinese language has the following distinct characteristics:
1) The Western languages are grammatically patterned. The Chinese language is not grammatically patterned. In the Chinese language the messages borne by the sentence is not expressed by way of grammatical pattern, but by way of the collocation of the words according to the inherent interrelations and the circumstances. The parts of a sentence can be located rationally to form the sentence. This method for forming a sentence is called by some linguists “the meaning connection method”. By this method the semantic element and the usage element in sentence are more important than the syntax element in sentence in the Western languages. Sentences formed by this method can carry the maximum amount of messages and express multiple meanings, giving the Chinese language a very high manifestation power. Take a lyric composed by Ma Zhiyuan, as an example :
秋思
枯藤老树昏鸦，小桥流水人家。
古道西风瘦马，夕阳西下， 断肠人在天涯。
Longing in Autumn
Withered rattans, old trees, raven in the evening,
A small bridge, a running brook, a house,
Age-old road, west wind, thin horse,
Sunset in the twilight, The broken hearted man in the corner of the world.
The first three sentences are all simply collocated nouns without the grammatical elements as in the Western languages. The readers are left to see the inherent grammatical relations by themselves. But the things expressed by these nouns are connected with each other, giving a beautiful picture of a mountain village and an autumn scene. The lyric involves colors, sounds, the near perspective, the far perspective, the static things and the moving things, as well as the sorrowful sentiment of the writer. The lyric is imbued with deep sentiments and a lasting appeal. The Chinese language is fully capable of conveying ideas and emotions, even though the Chinese sentences do not adhere the grammatical structure as in the western languages. For instance, a syntactic rule that nouns can never be preceded by an adverb as a modifier is regarded as unalterable in the Western language, but this rule does not always work in the Chinese language. Look at the following sentences:
