A Cognitive Linguistic Study Of Temporary Measure Words And Their Application In TCFL

Temporary measure words are in essence not measure words but can be employed as such in a certain context,working with numerals to form a quantitative structure and having the same grammatical functions of measure words.In the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language(TCFL),learners find it difficult to understand and master temporary measure words and often make errors in its application.In order to improve the teaching,teachers are expected to comprehensively study the formation mechanism and the rules of temporary measure words so as to apply them to practical teaching.In this way,students can better understand and use measure words,and teachers may come up with new ideas and new thinking in teachingTo explain the formation mechanism and the characteristics of temporary measure words,thus this paper analyzes and interprets temporary measure words in the metaphorical and metonymical models of cognitive linguistics.As a special linguistic phenomenon,temporary measure words use one thing to represent the number of another thing.In the metaphorical model,the concept of space is projected into the quantity concept.In metonymical model,the proximity of spatial or psychological distance and prominent features are highlighted.Besides,the questionnaire survey and data analysis also reveal the fact that students have insufficient understanding of temporary measure words and thus often make errors in the application.Given this problem,the employment of cognitive linguistics in the teaching of temporary measure words is highly recommended and three specific suggestions are concluded as follows.First,the spatial characteristics are to be first considered and an emphasis is to be put on the similarities and correlevance of the two things in a temporary measure word Second,based on the acquisition of ontological knowledge,subjective feelings are employed in the application of cognitive linguistic theory and graphic teaching methods to teaching.Last,classification and comparisons should be undertaken so as to provide considerable examples to deepen the understanding of temporary measure words.