A Study On The Construction "N + Jiushi + N" And Application Of The Construction To Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Chinese construction “N + Jiushi + N” is of strong productivity and high frequency of occurrence. And it still needs further research, so the construction is of research value. Being an emerging linguistic theory and having a closely connection with teaching chinese as a foreign language, construction grammar offers many helpful enlightenment to teach and learn Chinese as a second language. Therefore, under the guidance of construction grammar, this thesis makes a study on the construction “N + Jiushi + N” from the perspective of ontology and teaching chinese as a foreign language of. The thesis mainly comprises four chapters:The first chapter: Introduction. In this part, reasons and significance of the topic, and research theory and methods are presented. Research scope of the thesis are determined, corpus source of the paper are explained and domestic and overseas research status of the topic is summarized.The second chapter: Ontology research of the Construction “N + Jiushi + N”. According to different characters of “N” in the subject and object position in the construction, the thesis divides the construction into two types: first type —— subject and object have “the same form and meaning”, and second type —— subject and object have “ the same form and different meanings”. Then a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analysis is made on the second type. Syntactically, the construction is a syntactical independent SVO structure, including "Jiu" as an adverb, "Shi" as the judgment verb, "N" as a noun or a noun phrase. According to different standards, "N" can be divided into several different types, that is, referring to a person or a thing, abstract or concrete, a single syllable or polysyllabic and so on. The construction can be a sentence as a whole, or it can be used as a clause after a compound-complex sentence, or it also can serve as some sentence constituents, such as subject, object, attribute and so on. Finally, this paper analyses the negative situation. Semantically, the construction “N + Jiushi + N” in the subject and object with “the same form and meaning” shows no semantic requirements to the “N”. The construction mainly express affirmative stress or defend to “it is N not other things...” The construction “N + Jiushi + N” in subject and object have “same form and different meanings” requires the “N” have the nature of meaning(descriptive semantic feature) and evaluability, and can be used to express positive or negative meanings. The semantic of the construction “N + Jiushi + N” is made up of a complex and closely related family by [+ qualitative meaning], [+ comparative meaning], [+ distinguish meaning], [+ affirmative judge meaning], [+affirmative emphasis meaning], [+ emotional color meaning], [+ subjective evaluation meaning]. Among these, [+ subjective evaluation meaning] is the construction meaning of the construction. The semantic generative mechanism of the construction is mainly metonymy, prominence, concealment and semantic inheritance, etc. Pragmatically, the applied language context of the construction “N + Jiushi + N” is that the speaker has a psychological expectations according to the social consensus or personal understanding to the category "N" of a member. When the topic involves in the characteristics of a certain property of the member which just meets the expectations of the speaker, the speaker can make an evaluation using the construction “N + Jiushi + N”. The main pragmatic function of the construction is evaluation and discussion, interpretation and explanation, comparison, affirmation and emphasis. The construction uses Grice’s cooperative principle in conversation with pragmatic features such as subjectivity, economy and productivity.The third chapter: The teaching of Chinese construction “N + Jiushi + N” in a foreign language. In this chapter, we mainly collect corpus of the construction “N + Jiushi + N” used by overseas students in HSK dynamic Composition Corpus and detailedly analyze those sentences in their compositions. Then on the basis of language acquisition theory in construction grammar, we put forward several teaching principles, such as entirety, frequency, continuity, order, memory, experience and comparison. We respectively present some teaching advice on account of deficiency of ontology research and usage of the construction “N + Jiushi + N”, and teaching. We also propose corresponding measures and examples in order to solve the problem of noun annotation and lack of construction “N + Jiushi + N” in TCFL textbooks and reference books.The fourth chapter: Conclusion. This part retrospects and summarizes the research, and indicates the innovation, inadequacy and necessary improvements of the research.