A Comparative Study Of Swahili "PIGA-" And Chinese "?-"

At present,in the study of comparative Chinese acquisition,there are few comparative studies on Swahili and Chinese,and even less on verbs.In this paper,the author tries to take the verb "Da" in Chinese and the word "PIGA" in Swahili as examples to make a comparative analysis of the two languages from the perspective of semantics and grammar.Based on interviews with 30 students,this paper puts forward some suggestions on the teaching and acquisition of Swahili students.In order to enhance the practical basis of this study,the answers of the interviewees are further analyzed and discussed.The author hopes that this paper can provide reference and help to Kenyan and African students with Swahili background,and provide useful reference for Chinese teaching in Africa.This paper mainly uses the methods of literature review,comparative analysis,inductive analysis and interview survey.In the comparative study of Chinese verb "Da" and Swahili verb "PIGA",the author finds that when only one action is expressed,"PIGA" and Chinese "Da" have the same meaning;when Swahili "PIGA" plus a noun form a phrase it is in effect a new action verb,"PIGA" usually does not have its own original meaning,but when it means"contact between two objects",the meaning of "Da" is similar to "PIGA" and in some instances has overlapping parts;the meanings of "playing musical instrument","blowing","ironing,straightening and/or smoothing" are unique to Swahili "PIGA".In terms of grammar,we find that:in the grammatical characteristics of taking object and complement,"Da" and "PIGA" have basically the same grammatical combination mechanism;"PIGA" has more abundant tense forms than "Da";"PIGA" can be used as an affix more flexibly than "Da";and "PIGA" has a unique use as a predicate.The main reasons for the errors of Chinese learners whose mother tongue is Swahili are:negative transfer of mother tongue;influence of teaching materials and single learning strategy of learners.Based on these findings,the author has endeavored to forward some suggestions on how to teach,how to learn and how to arrange teaching materials for Chinese learners whose mother tongue is Swahili.