"Temporary" Synonyms And Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

There is an abundant amount of synonyms in the Chinese language. While the meaning and usage of synonyms may be comparable, there are subtle differences that impact upon the expressive and communicative effect of language. This paper selects of the "temporary" synonyms as its research focus. By building on academic literature and research of the Modern Chinese National Language Committee, we are able to provide a detailed analysis of the "temporary", with respect to syntactic structure, types of connections and auxiliary markers. All of the synonyms of "temporary" can be used adverbially and attributively, however,"yishi" can additionally serve as an object or complement. All of the three synonyms can be used before NP, VP, S, besides "zanshi" and "yishi" can also be used before AP; the auxiliary markers of "temporary" synonyms usually lie in the position of N-1or N+1. A comparison and explication of the synonyms of "temporary", in terms of time characteristics and semantic orientations, reveals that these types of synonyms have semantic signifiers of "a short duration" and "ambiguities as to time", furthermore, their semantic orientations are universal. Based on the analysis of sentence categories, sentence patterns and language styles, we can summarize the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic similarities and differences among synonyms of "temporary".In examining the databases of the HSK Dynamic Composition Corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University and the Jinan University Inter-language Corpus, we discover overseas students typically make two types of errors when it comes to the usage of the synonyms of "temporary":the error of using the "temporary" synonyms as a single word, and the error of mixing up the use of the "temporary" synonyms. This paper analyzes the causes of these errors from the internal and external aspects, knowing that internal reasons include the influences of native language culture, learning strategies and learning attitude; external reasons include the impact of the learning environment and the features of the Chinese language. At the end of this paper we put forward some relevant teaching strategies, namely sememe analysis teaching, morpheme analysis teaching, diagram teaching, inductive teaching, lexical chunks teaching and situational teaching.