A Contrastive Study Of Lexical Patterns In English And Chinese And The Implications For Foreign Language Teaching

For quite a long time, grammar is given priority in language research and language teaching, while vocabulary is regarded only isolated and non-generative "bricks" with fixed meaning that can be strung up according to grammatical rules to make sentences.But gradually the role and importance of vocabulary came to be realized and acknowledged. The most influential reactionary theory is put forward by Michael Lewis, claiming that "Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar."(Lewis, 1993) More and more scholars find that language consists not only of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but also of a large amount of multi-word prefabricated chunks. Therefore, in their cooperated work Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching James Nattinger and Jeanette DeCarrico stress the importance of lexical phrases, i.e., lexical chunks, and advocate that teachers should lead students to learn and use prefabricated language just as first language learners do.On the other hand, before 1970s, words were mainly studied on phrasal and sentential level. In 1970s, with the development and thriving of text linguistics and pragmatics, context came into the eyesight of researchers, thus study on vocabulary is also made on the text level, lexical cohesion serving as the bridge. One of the most significant theories of lexical cohesion which is specially concerned with our study in question is made by Michael Hoey. He stresses that lexical cohesion is "the single most important form of cohesive ties" (Hoey, 1991:9) and analyzes lexical pattern in non-narrative text.With the role of vocabulary in language in mind, and based on the theories of lexical chunks by Nattinger & DeCarrico and lexical cohesion by Hoey, this thesis intends to explore the lexical pattern on three levels, phrase, sentence and text in two languages, and then accordingly makes a contrastive analysis of the patterns. On phrasal and sentential levels, in both English and Chinese, there are multi-word chunks with the structure varying from most fixed to relatively more free combinations of words. And our concern is the prefabricated patterns, the fixed and semi-fixed phrases in the two languages, which is a common feature of them. The fixed phrases mostly are opaque in meaning and invariable in structure; while the semi-fixed phrases' meaning is opaque to different degrees and only a few of them is totally transparent, but generally they are variable in structure, thus may have various variants in specific linguistic context.Differences also exist between the two languages, concerning prefabricated patterns. There are hardly corresponding forms on phrasal level. Chinese set phrases of "four-character" form, customary phrases and Xiehouyu (the two-part allegorical saying), are all Chinese-specific, and such expressions can not be found in English with the same meaning and structure. Though proverbs are universally common and abundant not only in English and Chinese but in other languages, there are still some differences between them.On textual level a contrastive analysis is made of the selected parts from two sample novels. The results show the similarities and differences in the use of the four principal types of lexical cohesion in English and Chinese. The most obvious similarity lies in the same frequent use of lexical repetitions, i.e., both English and Chinese tend to use most simple repetition and then apply simple paraphrase and complex paraphrase, using the complex repetition the least. Meanwhile, differences also exist in the use of each lexical repetition type and the causes are explored from the linguistic point of view.The contrastive analysis also provides implications for EFL teaching of vocabulary in China: on phrasal and sentential levels, a lexical approach is suggested; on textual level, attention should be paid to words in lexical repetition patterns. By approaching to vocabulary on different hierarchical levels, vocabulary teaching can step onto a higher stage, and a number of shortcomings of traditional teaching can thus be overcome. This approach to vocabulary teaching can to a certain extent ensure that the students' productive vocabulary can be as large as their receptive one.The present study combines the theory of lexical chunks and lexical cohesion theory, focusing on both the static pattern and the dynamic patterning of lexis in the two languages, thus the comparatively systematic and comprehensive study provides a new perspective for contrastive studies of English and Chinese lexical patterns.