Examining the Energy Transfer Model in English and Chinese Interpersonal Interaction Events 

Shang Yehong

Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology，Jiangsu Nanjing，210000；

Abstract: Prototypical transitive events — especially those grounded in physical action — have long been analyzed through the lens of the energy transfer model. Whether this framework extends meaningfully to interpersonal interaction events, however, is a question that has received comparatively little attention. Centering on the verbs persuade and encourage and their Chinese counterparts “劝” and “鼓励”, this paper draws on corpus data from the COCA and BCC corpora to explore how transitivity operates when both the agent and the patient are human. In the examples examined, an agent’s communicative intent tends to be explicitly marked in the clause, yet what the patient actually does in response remains grammatically unspecified. On the whole, the energy transfer model seems ill-suited to events of this kind, and this holds for both language.

Key words: energy transfer model; interpersonal interaction events; English-Chinese contrast; corpus-based study

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