Comparative Analysis Of Word Order In Modern Chinese And Thai And Error Analysis Ofthai Students In Learning Chinese Word Order

There exhibit many similarities and differences between modern Chinese and Thai. The similarities mainly reside in two aspects. First, the arrangement of the main components of sentences follows the word order of SVO in both languages;Second,multiple attributivesdistribute around the central word symmetrically both in Chinese and Thai, so as the adverbials. The differences are lied in three aspects. First,modern Chinese modifiers precede the central word. However, the majority of Thai modifiers are suited behind the headword. Second, when the complement and object coexist in a sentence,three word orders are included in modern Chinese, namely,complement+object, object+complement and object in the middle. Whereas, the only one word order, object+complement structure, is included in Thai when the complement and object coexist in a sentence. Third, the indirect object precedes the direct object when it comes to the double-objects sentences in modern Chinese, while the word order of modern Thai language is opposed to that of modern Chinese.Linguistic Typology and Cognitive Linguistics provide a functional explanation for the similarities and differences between modern Chinese and Thai languages.Based on the discussions of several scholars about the word order of modem Chinese,we come to a conclusion that Chinese belongs to SVO language. The arrangement of multiple modified components is the result of the interaction of the theory of rail distribution, the principle of semantic approximation and identifiability hierarchy. The discrepancies between modern Chinese and Thai are mainly attributed to the particularity of modern Chinese, and they are the result of comprehensive effect of Chinese development and language integration. Modern Chinese and Thai language belong to the left branch language and the right branch language respectively, which result from the divergences between two languages on national cultural accumulation,the way of thinking, the cognitive strategy and so on.Among the errors of word order which can be produced in the process of Chinese acquisition of Thailand students, adverbial-related errors take up the largest percentage. Errors are caused by the influence of the historical origins of Chinese and Thai language on the students' cognitive strategies, the negative transfer of the mother tongue and the negative transfer of the target language and cultural migration.