A Study Of Synonymous Single And Double Syllable Adjectives In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

In this paper, single and double syllable synonymous adjectives of the Chinese Proficiency Vocabulary and Grade Outline Chinese Characters (revised edition) are considered as the research object. With reference to the Modern Chinese Dictionary (sixth edition),272pairs of single and double syllable synonymous adjectives are selected for enclosed inspection.On the basis of previous scholars’ research on single and double syllable synonymous verbs, nouns, adverbs and so on, this paper uses quantitative and qualitative analysis, comparative analysis and other research methods to investigate single and double syllable synonymous adjectives in the differences in semantics, grammar, as well as pragmatics. Coupled with HSK dynamic composition corpus, we first collect the examples of students’ acquisition errors of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives, and then do inductive analysis of the types of errors and explore the causes of the formation of errors. On this basis, we try to put forward the countermeasures for the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.Besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters.The first chapter summarizes the definition method of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives in the Modern Chinese Dictionary (sixth edition) and its corresponding relation in the form. With reference to the model of definition in the dictionary, the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives are divided into two categories of the same and similar according to the meanings. There are three kinds of corresponding forms of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives:a single-syllable adjective only corresponding to a synonymous double-syllable adjective, a single-syllable adjective corresponding to multiple synonymous double-syllable adjectives, two single-syllable adjectives corresponding to a synonymous double-syllable adjective.The second chapter studies the grammatical and pragmatic functions of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives. Through the comparative analysis of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives each as predicate, attributive, adverbial and complement, we find the ability of the single-syllable adjectives as these syntactic components is equal to the ability of the double-syllable synonymous adjectives. The differences in pragmatic functions are mainly in tone and style aspects. In general, the tone of a double-syllable adjective is heavier than a synonymous monosyllabic adjective, mainly because the semantics and the description sex of the double syllable adjective are stronger. Style differences can be divided into three categories:the written color of the monosyllabic adjective is stronger than the double syllable adjective, and the oral color of the monosyllabic adjective is stronger than the double syllable adjective. The color difference between the single and double syllable synonymous adjective isn’t obvious.The third chapter analyses the errors of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives. Based on HSK dynamic composition corpus, we collect the examples of272pairs of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives. Through the analysis of all the error examples, the author thinks that there are semantic errors, grammatical errors, pragmatic errors and metrical errors and some other error types. In the author’s opinion, the errors of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives mainly are causes of negative transfer of mother tongue and target language, the influence of learning strategies and learning environment.The fourth chapter discusses the teaching countermeasures of the single and double syllable synonymous adjectives. On the basis of the previous chapters, we will put forward several kinds of teaching strategies. Namely, we put emphasis on the analysis of the meaning of the morpheme, attach importance to the collocation of the words and teach vocabularies combining with the context.