The Impact of Translational Chinese on Original Language: A Syntactic Complexity Perspective

The study observes the influence of translational Chinese on modern Chinese in syntactic complexity of constituents in close-ended constructions.It assumes that the close-endedness of Chinese constructions makes it possible to assess its complexity through calculation, and that the calculation is cognitively well-grounded.With that assumption, the study first works out a formula to describe syntactic complexity peculiar to Chinese prenominal modifiers, then it makes a comparison between translational Chinese and original Chinese in load capacity and complexity, which finds that Chinese close-ended constructions have undergone great changes in their constituents' complexity, and the changes parallel those in translational Chinese.The study also finds that the augmentation of syntactic complexity in Chinese is in nature the increase of constituents' complexity in close-ended constructions, therefore, the decrease of the complexity can be one of the major ways of decreasing the negative effect of translational Chinese on Chinese original.