A Comparative Study Of The Formation Of Thai And Chinese Compound Words

Compounds are being used widely and increasingly in both Thai and Chinese.As a matter of fact,Thai and Chinese belong to the same type of language.So it is assumed that compounds used in Thai and Chinese are about the same or rather share similar sentence structures.However,in fact,it’s not really the case.Through studies over Thai and Chinese language,it’s discovered that there are obvious differences between both languages,whether from the point of wording or sentence pattern.Therefore,this research is aimed at discussing differences on wording of compounds in both languages by comparing linguistics differences.Besides,similarities and individualities of compounds wording form of in both languages are clarified in this research.It’s obvious that previous studies mostly concentrate on wording,semantics,structure and classification of compounds,which requires studies of how studying compound wording differences influences second language learning as a result.Based on given facts mentioned above,this research will focus on second language learning as guidance and analyze how mother language hinders students or generates positive language transfer in the process of learning second language.On top of that,this research indicates a detailed analysis on various factors that affect Thai students in learning Chinese wording structure based on practical teaching cases,and systematic teaching advice and solution strategies are included in it as well.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter I introduces causes of this study,study purposes,study meaning,study methodology and source of languages.This article is based on 2639 Thai compounds from《Thai Dictionary》(2011 Version)and 4071 Chinese compounds from《Moden Chinese Dictionary》(6trh Version).At the same time,it also includes analysis result of questionnaires on whether it affects both Chinese and Thai students to generate language transfer or not.This article bases itself on a survey of 100 Thai students and 50 Chinese students respectively.The purpose of this article is aimed at analyzing the understanding and difficulties of Thai and Chinese students in studying compound of wording structure as second languages.This survey includes interviewees’gender,age,name of university,major,time of Thai(Chinese)learning and Level of Thai(Chinese)etc.Besides,the content of survey includes tests of four different wording structures,which are attributive-centered structure,Center-Attributive structure,subject-predicate structure and supplementary structure.This study is based on the results of 100 primary writing tests of Chinese-majored students of the year 2016 from Arts University of Thailand and 100 medium-level translating tests of Thai-majored students of the year 2014 from Guangxi University for Nationalities as a whole,mainly includes a brief review on Thai and Chinese compounds studies.Moreover,studies are conducted mostly on three ancient Thai Dynasties that are Thonburi Kingdom,Ayuttaya Kingdom and Sukhothai Kingdom;Studies on Thai-Chinese compound wording includes wording,sentence pattern,relation of compound structure,semantics stricture,compound teaching and Chinese foreign compound studies.Besides,this research elaborates on differences of compound studies of both languages that include the benefits of learning as a second language as well as language transfer phenomenon of second languages.Chapter Ⅱ is mainly about further studies on Thai-Chinese compound wording structure.Concerning wording structure,different experts have different opinions over it.Generally speaking,wording of Thai compounding Morpheme structure is divided into three types:compounding,conversion and transformation.Compounding includes noun Compounding,verb Compounding and adjective Compounding.Conversion includes noun conversion,verb conversion and adjective conversion.And transformation includes noun transformation,verb transformation and adjective transformation.With studies listed above,comparisons and analysis are concluded and classified on the basis of three different wording structures of compounding,conversion and transformationChapter Ⅲ mainly discusses the characteristics of Thai-Chinese compound wording structures.This article divides Thai-Chinese compounding word structures into five structure types:modification,complement,associative,verb-object and subject-predication,which provides fundamental basis to analyze differences and similarities of both languages in compounding wording structures.Chapter Ⅳ is about morpheme analysis of characteristics of Thai-Chinese compounds.This article is based on compounds morpheme structure,abstraction of morpheme and compounding wording structure to display the relation between morpheme and meaning of compounds.Therefore,studying semantics structures of compounds needs to be connected with grammar structures,which,however,is a key point of semantics structure studies.On top of that,this article includes characteristics and differences of Thai-Chinese compounds semantics that are as follows:attributive-centered structure,Center-Attributivestructure,center-adverb of modification form,complement,associative,verb-object and subject-predication.Chapter Ⅴ focuses on language transfer theory as guidance in studying a second language and elaborates on the language transfer phenomenon generated in studying second languages of both Chinese and Thai students.This research is based on a survey conducted upon Thai-majored students from Arts University of Thailand and 50 Thai-majored students from Beijing Foreign Studies University and Minzu University of China.The focus of this research is on language transfer of Thai-Chinese compound sentence pattern.The survey is conducted by 50 Thai students and 100 Chinese students in form of tests of attributive-centered,subject-predication,and supplement compound structures with 5 questions for each,15 questions in total.As a result,a detailed analysis of collected information indicates:1、positive language transfer phenomenon generated by similarities of Thai-Chinese compound wording 2.Interference of native language for Chinese students in studying attributive-centered compound structure is tiny.3、Influence of second language differences on compound structure recognizing identifying ability 4、It’ s easy to study a second language with similar wording structures.Therefore,this research is inspirationally important to language vocabulary teaching efficiency regarding how to apply positive language transfer and avoid negative language transfer.