A Study On International Students’ Acquisition Of Modern Chinese Modal Verbs

Based on the previous studies, this paper analyzes further and makes a classification on Chinese modal verbs from semantics and syntax. Chinese modal verbs can be divided into three categories:epistemic modality, deontic modality and dynamic modality in terms of meaning of modal verbs. And in terms of syntax, it can be classified into raising modality and controlling modality. Raising modality includes epistemic modal verbs:"can(could)", "may", "will(would)", "need", "should", dynamic modal verbs:"can(could)", "may", and deontic modal verbs:"must", "can(could)"5 "may", "need", "should". Controlling modality includes dynamic modal verbs:"dare", "will(would)"s "need", "can(could)", "may".Based on the classification, this paper analyzes four syntactic features of modality, In details, they include:selection of subject, differences of negative words usage, passivization and combination of modal verbs. Meanwhile, this paper compares and analyzes the differences between Chinese and English modality from these four aspects. From the study, I find that Chinese-English modality shows same syntactic feature in terms of selection of subjective meaning. That means subject choice of raising modality in main clause is not restricted as long as the subject conforms with the sentence meaning. However, subject of controlling modality must be living individuals. In terms of negation, there are differences between Chinese and English modal verbs. Negative word goes before the modal verb in Chinese modality, while in English modality, negative word goes after the modal verb; in terms of passivization of clause, clause after raising modal verbs can be passive in Chinese modality and sentence meaning doesn’t change. Moreover, part of clauses after controlling modal verbs can also be passive, but the meaning of whole sentence is different; Chinese and English raising modal verbs are similar to each other and can be passive. Part of clause passivizations after controlling modal verbs do not change the sentence meaning, but the meaning of modal verbs change into raising meaning from controlling meaning; in terms of collocation and connection of modal verbs, there are continuous connection and interval connection in Chinese and the form is varied, while there is no continuous connection of modal verbs in standard English, only in few dialects continuous connection can be seen.We can analyze the learning situation of the native English speakers of the four syntactic characteristics according to the study and research of ontology. From the corpus data, we know that native English speakers make few mistakes on choice of subject in raising and controlling modality. They can master this well because there are similarities on subject selection between Chinese and English. About the clause passivization in modality, there are only seven related sentence patterns; this pattern is also rarely used in Chinese corpus. This shows that native Chinese speakers don’t use this sentence pattern often, so the overseas students also rarely use this in writing; about the negative words selection in modality, overseas students prefer "bu+modal verbs" rather than "mei+modal verbs"; about the connection of modal verbs, students use interval connection more than continuous connection. But the errors of interval connection are more than continuous connection.In terms of acquisition research, we combined corpus investigation and qu estionnaire. From HSK dynamic composition corpus we choose 100 compositio ns of learners whose mother tongue is English,we made a investigation to the 100 compositions in the usage of modal, concrete statistics of Chinese 10 mo dais in each kind of usage frequency, and analyses native English speakers’s a cquisition sequence of the three semantic types modal (epistemic modality, de ontic modality and dynamic modality), the author studies on 10 modals and t he different usage of acquisition sequence. Study found that three kinds of sem antic type modal acquisition sequence is:epistemic modality>deontic modality> dynamic modality; In this paper,the authorstudies on 10 modals of the acquisit ion sequenceis:yuanyi>yinggai>hui>yao>keneng>bixu>neng>ken>gan>keyi,the acq uisition sequences of multiple meanings’modals is:yinggai1>yinggai2, hui1>hui2, keyi2>keyi4>keyi3>keyi1, neng3>neng1, yao2>yao3。neng2、neng4、yao1 is not appe ar in our composition corpusOn the basis of investigation of the corpus, we also examined the students’ acquisition situation by questionnaire about the four kinds of syntactic characteristics of ontology. The result shows that in terms of subject selection, students’ judgments are quite right as Chinese and English are similar to each other in subject selection; in terms of negation of modal verbs, students’ accuracy rate in "bu+modal verbs" is much higher than "mei+modal verbs". This is consistent with our corpus investigation. Our investigation shows that when using negation of modal verbs, students all use "bu+modal verbs"; in terms of clause passivization, students prefer "raising modal verbs+bei" rather than "controlling modal verbs+bei"; in terms of connection, students’ judgment about correct sequence of modal verbs is totally right, while their judgment about wrong sequence of modal verbs is quite different. Some students accept the sequence, while others don’t. One reasons is mother tongue’s influence, the other reason maybe is related to students’ study situation about modal verbs.According to the problems of students’ acquisition, we should adjust teaching methods properly, so overseas students can acquire Chinese modal verbs better.