Contrastive Research Of Adverbials And Their Arrangement In Chinese And English Sentences

Robert Lado, one of the most renowned American linguistician illustrated, in his brilliant book named Cross-culture Linguistics, the most different lingustic items are generally found to be the most difficult ones as for second language learners. It is noticeable that the gap between English and Chinese adverbials, in terms of their composition, classification, and especially of their word order, has contributed to the frequent occurences of errors in adverbial arrangement in Chinese sentences, made by English spoken learners, and it accordingly, impose a negative impact on teaching practice of Chinese as a foreign language. Therefore, the comparison made among the above aspects is expected to be of instructive significance for teaching practice, and as a worthwhile reference to research and studies in teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.In this thesis, adverbials arrangement in English and Chinese sentences is designated as the principle research subject. With the guidance of some promient theories in linguistics, such as Contrastive Analysis, Errors Analysis and Inter-language theory, the thesis examines specifically error samples of adverbials arrangement, made by English spoken learners, collected from HSK (composition) language data, Through which the thesis devoted itself to identifying the major source of errors occurrences and meanwhile, it may also serve as a reasonable approach accessible to comprehension and prediction of possibilities of error occurrences, which will consequently benefit the learners.Six chapters are integrated into the context structure of this thesis. Chapter I (1) Interpretation of the selected topic which involves aims and purposes of the research for this thesis and the original ideas associated with the topic. (2) The range and scope of research the thesis covers and the research method it refers to. (3) The origin of language resources and the initiative of research.Chapter II A brief introduction of adverbials in English and Chinese sentences, including their definition, composition and their categories. The similarities exist among all these three aspects lay a foundation for a rational comparison of adverbials arrangement between both languages.Chapter III Comparison of single adverbials in word order in which adverbials of time, adverbials of place, adverbials of manner are preferably considered in both languages with a view to their feasibilites for contrastive research.Chapter IV Comparison of multinomial adverbials in word order. Similarily, the above-mentioned three types of adverbials take the priority to get involved in the process.Chapter V Analysis of errors on adverbials arrangement committed typically by English spoken learners. Special effort were made to the exploration of source of errors, and from which some feasible and practical advice and suggestions derived to the benefit of both learning and teaching.Chapter VI A summary of the thesis.