Study On The Word Group Of “Kou”(口) In The Graded Chinese Syllables,Characters And Words For The Application Of Teaching Chinese To The Speakers Of Other Languages

"Kou"(" 口 ",which means "mouth")is an important organ of human beings. There are large numbers of expressions and vocabulary related to "kou" in Chinese language.These expressions and vocabulary are the difficult points in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language(TCSL), since they have complex meanings and are widely used. Based on the study of TCSL,this research investigated 339 words and phrases related to "kou"as the objects. All these words and phrases were selected from The Graded Chinese Syllables, Characters and Words for the Application of Teaching Chinese to the Speakers of Other Languages. The researcher set out to classify and grade these words and phrases from the perspectives of words and morphemes, so that some new methods to teach word groups related to "kou" could be found.From the perspective of words, the word group were divided into three types:single-syllable (character) words, compound words that comprise the morpheme "kou" ,compound words and expressions that comprise "kou" as a radical,which includes thirty-six, forty-six, two hundred and fifty-seven of words or phrases. The researcher made a more detailed and more comprehensive classification of "kou"- related words according to the theories of sematic categorization so that a complete semantic network of this word group could be established. The researcher investigated the cognitive metaphors in the "kou" -related words, and discussed two matters: first, how the source concept of "kou" were projected into such target concepts as "taste"(口味)"discourse"(言语)"entrance"(入口)and "emotion”(情感)according to the principles of Proximity and Prominence; second, how the source concept of "kou" was projected into the target concepts such as "mouth-like subjects" "passageways" and "broken points" according to the principle of Similarity. Examples were given in order to illustrate the semantic cognitive relation between the words of other categories.From the perspective of morphemes, according to the edition of Modern Chinese Dictionary (sixth edition) and the practical needs of TCSL, the researcher counted the 73 morpheme forms that comprised 96 morphemes. According to the degrees to which the semantic meanings of "kou" were prominent in the objects, the 339 words and phrases were divided into four types: complete-prominence, partly -prominence,indirect-prominence and complete-non-prominence words. In order to get rid of the limitation of the character forms, the researcher put forward a new concept"morpheme-item" and found 234 morpheme items in total. Then a chart was generated to analyze how these morpheme items were distributed in different words and phrases and how they formed words and phrases.The implications for TCSL were that the teaching could be centered on words.Teachers should construct a semantic network according to the theories of semantic categorization and teach words of a certain category together. Teachers should also employ metaphors to teach words with multi-meanings so that students could handle the internal relations among words and the cultural meaning behind those words. On the other hand, teachers could focus on the morphemes and develop students’ ideas on the classification of words in accordance with their surface forms. The teaching of the"kou"-related words could be based on the similarity in their surficial forms. Besides,teachers should take the polysemy of Chines language and the foreign students’ needs into consideration. The categorization and grading of "kou"-related words has set an example for teachers to carry out language teaching based on the categorization and grading of morpheme items so that the effectiveness and pertinence of vocabulary teaching could be improved.