Chinese Interference in Learning English Verbs1.doc
《Chinese Interference in Learning English Verbs1.doc》由会员分享,可在线阅读,更多相关《Chinese Interference in Learning English Verbs1.doc(13页珍藏版)》请在三一办公上搜索。
1、Chinese Interference in Learning English VerbsMother tongue interference is defined as the use of elements from ones native language while learning a second one. Instances of Chinese interference in English learning can be found at the level of pronunciation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary and meani
2、ng. English and Chinese verbs, although similar in many aspects, have some subtle but significant differences in semantic composition, bringing difficulties to Chinese students in learning English verbs. 1. The semantic composition of verbs According to Websters New World Dictionary, a verb is a wor
3、d that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being.”. From this definition we can see that the semantic function of a verb is to describe a motion, may it be an act, occurrence, or mode of being. However, motion itself cannot make up
4、 a motion event. There are other elements associated with motion such as direction (as in take and bring), manner (as in prance”), aspect (as in “restart”) and so on. All these associative elements, together with motion, constitute a motion complex. Semantic elements are realized by linguistic struc
5、tures of various forms. A motion complex is expressed by what we call a verb complex, which comprises the head verb, the particle and the reflection. Since reflection is more concerned with grammar, we will limit ourselves to a consideration of the first two. Therefore, here we have two sets, as are
6、 illustrated in the following: Set A (motion complex) Set B (verb complex) motion head verb manner particle direction cause result . Noticeably, these two sets, that is, the semantic composition and its linguistic form, are seldom in one-to-one correspondence. In some cases a motion complex is reali
7、zed by a single head verb, which is termed incorporation. e.g. He cupped his hands and I poured some water into them. Cup means to form (esp. the hands) into the shape of a cup, which depicts both motion and manner. However, sometimes a single verb is incapable of depicting a motion complex, in whic
8、h case particles are used in conjunction with the head verb, indicating direction, manner, aspect, and so on. e.g. I ran in. Many direction verbs in Chinese like 上去, 下来 are cases in point. In the following sections we will discuss how the head verb functions in fulfilling incorporation and how the p
9、article plays an important part in the verb complex. 2. A comparison of incorporation between English and Chinese head verbs 2.1 Incorporation is abundant in language. Lets see some examples from English and Chinese: English verb Chinese equivalent Meaning (interpretation) to saw 锯 to cut with a saw
10、 用锯子切割 to target to aim at a target 把.作为目标 to trudge to walk with heavy steps 步履沉重地走 to clutter to make untidy or confused, esp. by filling with useless or unwanted things 乱七八糟地堆 After a brief comparison we can say that incorporation is quite common with English verbs, whereas in many cases the exac
11、t Chinese equivalents to these incorporate verbs cannot be found. To encode the meaning, Chinese relies on other sentence elements like adverbial and complement in the above examples. Now we have arrived at a major difference between English and Chinese verbs, that is, the English is rich in incorpo
12、rate verbs which allow a greater semantic specificity and thus a vivid description of the motion complex, whereas in Chinese incorporation is not so common. Instead, it is often the case that to portray a motion complex, the associative elements are separately coded by other sentence elements. This
13、conclusion could be illustrated as following: Subject sentence elements object other than the verb complement adverbial English . sentence motion the incorporate verb direction associative elements manner result sentence elements subject other than the verb object . Chinese sentence elements adverbi
14、al direction Sentence that realize the complement (to indicate) manner associative elements particle result in a motion complex the general verb motion This also explains the claim that English vocabularies, relatively speaking, are semantically opaque, whereas Chinese ones have a greater degree of
15、transparency. (It is important to note that transparency is the end-point of a continuum of degrees of opacity, much as cleanness is the end-point of degrees of dirtiness.) 2.2 To get a comprehensive understanding of incorporation of English verbs and their equivalent Chinese expressions, a careful
16、examination is in order. Here we classify incorporation into several types: A. incorporation from N-V Conversion William Morris and Marry Morris pointed out in their Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1975):The conversion of nouns to verbs is a form of linguistic change as old as the language
17、itself. Since 1980s, N-V Conversion has been drawing attention as a new trend of Modern English, demonstrated in the following remarks: One of the fastest-growing trends is verbing (or the practice of converting nouns into verbs). A few years ago would you have attended a meeting and dared to say yo
18、u had categorised your subject? Then time-lined and agendaed it? Yet you hear this constantly in education and business, Matters are resourced and targeted. (Educational Age / 1985) Randolph Quirk gave seven categories of N-V Conversion in his A Grammar of Contemporary English (1973). Just take one
19、of them as an example. To put in/on N e.g. bottle (to put into a bottle/(把.)装进瓶子) The motion complex realized in the verb bottle can be interpreted as motion + path + ground. However, from its Chinese translation we can see that in Chinese it is separated into two parts, that is, a general verb 装 an
20、d complement 进瓶子. B.Motion + manner e.g. He devoured all the biscuits. 他狼吞虎咽地吃完了所有的饼干。 Devour means to eat hungrily and in large quantities so that nothing remains, which is expressed in Chinese by a general verb 吃, an adverbial 狼吞虎咽地 and a complement 完. Actually motion + manner type covers most spe
21、cific verbs in English, whose vividness and freshness have become a feature of the English language. It is worthy of note that the same motion in conjunction with different manners unfolds different pictures of the motion complex. That explains why English has large numbers of synonyms, which share
22、a central conceptual meaning (motion) but differ in manner, intensity, style, association, and so on. No wonder the British linguist F. Palmer said, “There are no real synonyms and no true words have the same meaning.” To highlight the subtle differences among synonyms, a componential analysis would
23、 be of help. For instance, when we intend to express 笑 in English, the most possible word that comes to our Chinese mind is laugh or smile, the most general ones of its kind. Actually, we have a series of synonyms to choose from according to a given context, analyzed below: chuckle: + laugh + quietl
24、y giggle: + laugh + silly + repeatedly + uncontrollably sniggle: + laugh + half suppressed grin: + laugh + teeth-shown guffaw: + laugh + loudly + perhaps rudely The two types of incorporation so far listed are the most important and common ones in the English language. Besides, we have some other ty
- 配套讲稿:
如PPT文件的首页显示word图标,表示该PPT已包含配套word讲稿。双击word图标可打开word文档。
- 特殊限制:
部分文档作品中含有的国旗、国徽等图片,仅作为作品整体效果示例展示,禁止商用。设计者仅对作品中独创性部分享有著作权。
- 关 键 词:
- Chinese Interference in Learning English Verbs1
![提示](https://www.31ppt.com/images/bang_tan.gif)
链接地址:https://www.31ppt.com/p-3022369.html