[ArXiv] Contrastive Analysis of Constituent Order Preferences Within Adverbial Roles in English and Chinese News: A Large-Language-Model-Driven Approach
Decoding How English and Chinese News Tell Stories Differently
Have you ever noticed how English and Chinese articles seem to organize information in fundamentally different ways? While an English headline might lead with the most crucial details, its Chinese counterpart often sets the stage with background context first.
In this research, I explored these fascinating differences in how English and Chinese news present information, focusing on the positioning of functional elements like time, location, and manner expressions within sentences.
What I Discovered
Using LLMs to facilitate analysis of comparable news corpora, I found striking patterns:
✨ English news favors a “core information first” approach, placing additional details after the main message.
🌏 Chinese news prefers a “background first” structure, often introducing contextual information before the core event.
These aren’t just academic curiosities—they have real implications for language learners, translators, and anyone working across these languages.
Why This Matters
Understanding these contrasting preferences helps explain why direct translation often feels awkward and why bilingual speakers sometimes sense something is “off” even when individual words are correct.
The research also reveals that both languages demonstrate remarkable flexibility when multiple functional elements appear together, adjusting their ordering based on information flow and pragmatic considerations.
Read the full paper to dive deeper into the data and methodology behind these insights.
Abstract:
Based on comparable English-Chinese news corpora annotated by Large Language Model (LLM), this paper attempts to explore the differences in constituent order of English-Chinese news from the perspective of functional chunks with adverbial roles, and analyze their typical positional preferences and distribution patterns. It is found that: (1) English news prefers linear narrative of core information first, and functional chunks are mostly post-positioned, while Chinese news prefers overall presentation mode of background first, and functional chunks are often pre-positioned; (2) In SVO structure, both English and Chinese news show differences in the distribution of functional chunks, but the tendency of Chinese pre-positioning is more significant, while that of English post-positioning is relatively mild; (3) When function blocks are co-occurring, both English and Chinese news show high flexibility, and the order adjustment is driven by information and pragmatic purposes. The study reveals that word order has both systematic preference and dynamic adaptability, providing new empirical support for contrastive study of English-Chinese information structure.