A Corpus-based Study On The Foreign Students' Acquisition Of The Non-interrogative Uses Of "Shui"(Who) In Chinese

Since the early 20th century, scholars have made a series of researches on the non-interrogative uses of interrogative pronouns from different perspectives in China. Although there are more and more elaborated researches nowadays, studies on the foreign students'acquisition of non-interrogative uses are not taken seriously yet. However, the non-interrogative use of interrogative pronouns in contemporary Chinese is quite a common and complex phenomenon and foreign students have difficulty learning them indeed.With the methodology combining description and explanation, based on a large collection of data from the native and interlanguage corpora, this thesis fully examines the foreign students'acquisition of non-interrogative uses of"shui"(who) -- a typical interrogative pronoun in Chinese, aiming at providing some implications for teaching Chinese as a second language.This thesis consists of six parts.The first part is a brief introduction to this corpus-based study, including the research objects, purpose, significance and methodology.Chapter one is mainly about the classification of all the uses of"shui"(who) on the basis of previous studies. There are two major types and eight sub-categories. Two major types are: interrogative and non-interrogative uses. Eight sub-categories are listed as follows: primary question, secondary question, universal referring, substitution, anaphor, exemplification, basic common use of existential referring, indication of emotions. Among them, primary question together with secondary question constitutes the whole of interrogative uses. Substitution, anaphor and exemplification, speaking from a broad sense, could be within the scope of existential referring. However, in view of their unique structures, we distinguish them from the basic common use of existential referring. According to such a standard of classification, we draw out samples from the native corpus and make a statistical analysis. It turns out that the frequencies of non-interrogative uses are much higher than that of the interrogative uses on the part of native speakers.Chapter two mainly analyzes and compares the frequencies of all the non-interrogative uses of"shui"(who) by foreign students based on the samples collected from the interlanguage corpus. On the one hand, we find that language backgrounds have little effect on the frequencies of non-interrogative uses. On the other hand, it shows in evidence that foreign students show a strong inclination to the application of the use of universal referring, while native speakers tend to indicate some kind of emotions in the use of"shui"(who). And this disparity is quite significant.Chapter three thoroughly explores the foreign students'acquisition of the non-interrogative uses of"shui"(who). According to the relative correct rate of various non-interrogative uses (from low to high), we make a corresponding division, resulting in a possible acquisition order and three acquisition sections (from difficult to easy). Then we have an analysis of some factors affecting this acquisition order.Chapter four tries to discuss the problems foreign students would possibly meet in their acquisition of the non-interrogative uses of interrogative pronouns in Chinese based on the possible acquisition order, thus providing some suggestion for teaching Chinese as a second language.The concluding part consists of three parts, the major findings of this research, the problems unresolved hitherto in this corpus-based study, and the prospect of further exploration.