Title: A Cognitive Study of the Syntactic and Semantic Features in English and Chinese Causal Complex Sentences

Abstract: Based on the data analysis of the self-built corpus, this paper makes a systematic cognitive analysis of the syntactic and semantic features of English and Chinese causal complex sentences. The similarities are: both English and Chinese causal complex sentences have causal markers, both tend to mark the causal clause, both have cause-effect and effect-cause sequences, and causal connectives tend to be positioned between the clauses. The original meanings of causal connectives in both English and Chinese are related to the cause. Furthermore，the differences in the marked objects and the semantic prominence reflect the different ways of understanding and construing the cause-and-effect events between English and Chinese.

Keywords: causal complex sentences, syntactic features, semantic features, cognitive explanation

Authors: Yunhua Deng, Professor, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China; Fen Liu, Professor, College of Foreign Studies, Changsha University, Changsha, Hunan, China.