Research On The Word Usage In A Character Study In Mandarin Colloquial Based On Corpus Technology

A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial was a reference book for Peking Mandarin compiled by a missionary of American Christian Congregational Church named Chauncey Goodrich in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.The corpus involved in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial is a mirror reflecting the civil life and local customs and practices in Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.To some degree,abundant vocabulary collected in the book,which is of valuable historical significance,has reflected the overall condition of Peking Mandarin with distinctive features of the times.However,little attention has been paid to Chauncey Goodrich and his Chinese literatures in academic circles.Based primarily on the revised edition of A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquialby Japanese scholar Fukuji Ishiyama,this paper attempts to present a multi-dimensional and statistical analysis on the usage of words and phrases included in this book by comparative study with the help of corpus tools.The author concludes that 1)A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial is a Chinese vocabulary reference book that can help middle-level and advanced Chinese language learners to enlarge their vocabulary;2)the frequently used modern Chinese characters and phrases have taken the basic shape during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China;3)its great emphasis on idioms and cultural words is still of certain value to teaching modern Chinese as a second language.This paper consists of ten chapters.Apart from Introduction in Chapter one and Conclusion in Chapter ten,the other eight chapters,which constitute the main body of the paper,elaborate on the following aspects:Chapter two:After a detailed examination of the usage of characters in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial,we find that 3,161 types of words in it are included in The List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese,accounting for 71.73%of the total in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial.Word frequency is an important consideration in the compilation of the book.The frequently used modern Chinese characters remain basically unchanged since the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China.Chapter three:The conclusion that modern Chinese vocabulary has taken the basic shape during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China when A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial was published is based on an overall examination of the book in terms of vocabulary,phrase length,parts of speech and frequency as well comparison between these aspects and the lexical features of modern Chinese.Chapter four:Special attention is given to function words in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial.Function words in modern Chinese language remain practically the same since publication of the book.Some of the function words included in the book are no longer used in modern Chinese,such as zhao "?”used as a preposition,liaoer“??" and na“?”as modal particles,and some function words that have different meanings from those in modern Chinese,such askeshi"“??",used as a conjunctionand ma“?”as a modal particle.It is of great linguistic corpus value for us to study the diachronic evolution of the function words.Chapter five:The conclusion that the frequently used words in modern Chinese vocabulary has taken the basic shape during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China is drawn on the basis of a comparative study between the frequently used words included in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial and those in modern Chinese language in terms of meaning,word type,frequency,etc.Some frequently used words that may serve as supplementary entries and semantic items to the Hanyu Da Cidian(literally:Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary)can be sorted out.Chapter six:The investigation on proverbs in the book also presents a glossary of 792 idioms included in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial,Lexicon of Common Words in Contemporary Chinese and Contemporary Chinese Word Dictionary,which will be of some value to teaching Chinese idioms.It also shows the book editor's foresight in his emphasis on and choice of proverbs over a hundred years ago,displaying certain foresight and strong practicability in the consciousness of phrase selection.Chapter seven:It is concluded that cultural words account for a large proportion in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial,that culturally they cover most of the core values of Chinese traditionalculture,and that a profusion of cultural phrases or sentences in the book increases cultural connotations in various ways.These findings will be valuable and illuminating to the acquisition of cultural words in teaching Chinese as a second language currently.Chapter eight:The number of neologisms in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquialis small.We select a part of them to compare with the collection situation of the Hanyu Da Cidian(literally:Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary)and Jin Xian Dai Ci Yuan(literally:Etymological Dictionary of Modern Times).These new members of Chinese vocabulary can provide historical reference to the study of some neologisms as to the approximate time they were adopted or as a supplementary to dictionaries of neologisms.Chapter nine:The article examines from the angle of teaching how the entries in A Character Study in Mandarin Colloquial are explained.A comparative study of the words included in the book and the teaching syllabus for modern Chinese vocabularyattempts to summarize their features and deficiencies,and discusses the former's relevance to the current Chinese vocabulary teaching and the compilation of reference books as a foreign language.