A Comparative Study Of Spatial Prepositions In Han And Qin Dynasties And Their Teaching Research

Spatial prepositions refer to a kind of preposition which indicate the spatial positions of an object and represent the spatial sense of a language. In this paper, the spatial preposition of Chinese and Thai language is divided into five categories: indicating the position, the starting point, the direction, the crossing point, and the end point. This paper makes a comparative analysis semantically and syntactically of these five categories of Chinese and Thai language. It will also investigate the error types and reasons of the Thai students’ acquisition about Chinese spatial preposition, and thus make some suggestions for teaching strategies.Firstly, this paper gives an overall comparison of the spatial preposition between the two languages. Semantically, the spatial prepositions of Chinese and Thai language both define all kinds of spatial locations and relationships. Syntactically, a spatial prepositional phrase of Chinese mostly acts as adverbial modifier which appears at the beginning of a sentence as well as between a subject and a predicate, and acts as complement appearing behind a verb. However, a prepositional phrase of Thai language acts as adverbial modifier which appears behind a verb as an adverbial modifier other than complement. Then, this paper categorically compares some correspondingly common spatial preposition from Chinese and Thai language. For instance, the word zai which indicates the position in Chinese has the most complicated corresponding relationship with Thai language. If the preposition zai indicates something that does not need directional words or the directional words can be omitted, the corresponding prepositions in Thai language are "(?)" "(?)" and "(?). When the preposition zai combines the directional words to form a preposition frame, (?) starting point prepositions cong, zi, the direction prepositions xiang, chao, wang and the end point preposition dao also have a very complicated corresponding relationships with the spatial preposition in Thai language. The crossing point preposition yan (zhe), shun (zhe), in Thai language the corresponding word is very simple,only just has "(?)". In addition, this paper analyzes the reasons which cause the difference in the spatial preposition between both two languages.The main factor is the different types of the word orders between Chinese and Thai languages which affects not only the position but also the function of the spatial preposition phrase in the whole sentence.Finally, this paper analyzed the error types in Thai student’s acquisition about these Chinese spatial prepositions, and the reasons why they cause these kinds of errors. It also gives some advice such as focusing on the contrast between the two languages, finding out the importance and the difficulties in Chinese teaching, as well as the suggestions for the improvement in compiling textbooks.