Chinese-English Contrastive Grammar

Chinese-English Contrastive Grammar
Author: David C. S. Li
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-07-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9888390864

The main objective of Chinese-English Contrastive Grammar: An Introduction is to familiarize the reader with a subset of the learning difficulties and common errors in ESL/EFL pronunciation and lexico-grammatical structures encountered by Chinese learners and users of English, in Hong Kong and beyond. It also helps readers understand some of the ways in which the Chinese language has undergone structural change as a result of Europeanization. The book begins with a review of Cantonese-English contrastive phonology and is followed by a detailed analysis of lexico-grammatical deviations found among Chinese ESL/EFL learners. It concludes with a brief history of the Europeanization of the Chinese language and a discussion of commonly encountered lingua-cultural problems encountered by Chinese users of English in intercultural communication settings. This book is written primarily for teachers and students specializing in language-related disciplines. Scholars who wish to understand the acquisitional challenges for Chinese students in the process of learning English as an additional language will also find the book an informative reference. ‘David C. S. Li and Zoe Pei-sui Luk’s brand new introduction to Chinese-English contrastive grammar covers a number of key topics and comes with copious data, abundant exemplification, and in-depth analyses. A must-read for all who are interested in the similarities and differences between the two languages, and why.’ —K. K. Luke, Nanyang Technological University ‘This is a book which has long been needed. Drawing on their own research and teaching experience, the authors have produced a linguistically accurate and insightful, but also very readable book. It should be required reading for language teachers in Hong Kong and the Greater China region.’ —Stephen Matthews, University of Hong Kong

Corpus-Based Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese

Corpus-Based Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese
Author: Tony McEnery
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2010-07-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136944893

This book is concerned with cross-linguistic contrast of major grammatical categories in English and Chinese, two most important yet genetically different world languages. This genetic difference has resulted in many subsidiary differences that are, among other things, related to grammar. Compared with typologically related languages, cross-linguistic contrast of English and Chinese is more challenging yet promising. The main theme of this book lies in its focus on cross-linguistic contrast of aspect-related grammatical categories, or, grammatical categories that contribute to aspectual meaning – both situation aspect at the semantic level and viewpoint aspect at the grammatical level – in English and Chinese. The unique strength of this volume lies in that it is first corpus-based book contrasting English and Chinese. Given that the state of the art in language studies is to use corpora, the significance of the marriage between contrastive studies and the corpus methodology in this book is not to be underestimated.

Understanding English Grammar

Understanding English Grammar
Author: Hung Tony T.N.
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 962209726X

This book aims at helping learners of English (particularly those whose first language is Chinese) to improve their understanding of, and their competence in, English grammar. It directly addresses the needs of Chinese learners and takes full account of their first language in helping them understand how English works by systematically requiring them to think about grammar, and to come up with their own hypotheses about how it works on the basis of the given data. The book is designed for students' learning on their own as well as in a classroom. Each chapter is accompanied by a separate 'students' notes', which the students can consult after working through all the data and exercises in each chapter, to check their own answers and to read further explanations on the grammatical points in question. This book therefore appeals to the growing number of students learning through self-access, as well as promotes independent learning among those enrolled in educational institutions. Key features: - Directly addresses the needs of Chinese learners of English - Concise, user-friendly grammar presentations followed by examples of correct use - Innovative exercises offering learners in-depth practice of key grammar points - Detailed students' notes section and a full answer key for easy reference - Suitable for use in class, or for self-study

Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Syntax

Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Syntax
Author: Ruixi Ressy Ai
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2024-02-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1036400077

This book introduces a contrastive analysis of Chinese and English syntax based on generative grammar. It covers major syntactic domains, including but not limited to noun phrases, verb phrases, the inflectional domain, the discourse-related domain and ellipsis. Based on the empirical data drawn from both Chinese and English, and recast in modern linguistic terminology, the book introduces various rules and theoretical modules from the generative framework to analyze the similarities and differences between Chinese and English syntax. The chapters are arranged such that the book moves from the easiest syntactic topics gradually towards the more complex and advanced ones. Each chapter includes a short summary of major points and references for further reading. Readers are not required to have background knowledge in syntax. The book can serve as a textbook or a reference book for scholars of Chinese studies, Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL), Chinese linguistics, comparative linguistics and theoretical linguistics.

Aspect in Mandarin Chinese

Aspect in Mandarin Chinese
Author: Richard Xiao
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027230836

Chinese, as an aspect language, has played an important role in the development of aspect theory. This book is a systematic and structured exploration of the linguistic devices that Mandarin Chinese employs to express aspectual meanings. The work presented here is the first corpus-based account of aspect in Chinese, encompassing both situation aspect and viewpoint aspect. In using corpus data, the book seeks to achieve a marriage between theory-driven and corpus-based approaches to linguistics. The corpus-based model presented explores aspect at both the semantic and grammatical levels. At the semantic level a two-level model of situation aspect is proposed, which covers both the lexical and sentential levels, thus giving a better account of the compositional nature of situation aspect. At the grammatical level four perfective and four imperfective aspects in Chinese are explored in detail. This exploration corrects many intuition-based misconceptions, and associated misleading conclusions, about aspect in Chinese common in the literature.

Teaching Chinese as an International Language

Teaching Chinese as an International Language
Author: Yeng-Seng Goh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2017-08-17
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1316538877

Bilingual and bicultural scholar Yeng-Seng Goh offers the first in-depth English language analysis of global Chinese, exploring the spread of Chinese beyond China and its emergence as a global language. Approaching the topic from a Singapore perspective, Goh uses this fascinating language ecosystem, with its unique bilingual language policy, as a case study for Chinese language learning. Offering clear insights into the pedagogy of teaching Chinese as an international language (TCIL), this book covers a range of important topics, such as the use of English in the teaching of Chinese, the teaching of Chinese by non-native teachers, information and communications technology in L2 learning and teaching, and the progressive testing of receptive skills. In doing so, it presents a new, integrative approach to the compilation of Chinese learner's dictionaries, an innovative bilingual hybrid model for training TCIL teachers, and a solid theoretical framework for Masters of Arts programmes in TCIL.

Contrastive Linguistics

Contrastive Linguistics
Author: Ping Ke
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9811313857

This book serves as an introduction to contrastive linguistics - the synchronic study of two or more languages, with the aim of discovering their differences and similarities, especially the former, and applying these discoveries to related areas of language study and practice. It discusses the principles and methods, and contrasts English, Chinese, German, and other languages at phonological, lexical, grammatical, textual, and pragmatic levels, focusing more on the useful insights contrastive analysis provides into real-world problems in fields such as applied linguistics, translation and translation studies, English or Chinese as a foreign language, and communication than on the discipline itself.

Modality in English and Chinese

Modality in English and Chinese
Author: Renzhi Li
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2004
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1581122357

Modality is a grammatical, or semantic-grammatical, category. It is an important component of human languages. This is at least the case in most European languages. To what extent is it a near-universal? This thesis is to contribute to the question. It focuses on modal verbs in English and Chinese, two genetically and geographically unrelated languages, and analyzes what these two languages have in common and how they differ in their systems of modality. To achieve the aim, the thesis adopts the theoretical framework proposed by van der Auwera (1996, 1998 with Plungian, 2001) for the typological study of modality. Its language-specific descriptions involve the morphosyntactic features, notional functions, modal logic, and diachronic development. With these descriptions, it constructs a cross-linguistic database in a uniform, parallel structure. Then on the basis of this database, it deals with the cross-linguistic issues about modality in English and Chinese. Like many of the studies in this area, this research makes use of the well-sampled data in the relevant literature, thereby assuring the same degree of representativeness. When the data do not meet this need, it resorts to computer-based corpora. In the diachronic study of Chinese modality, quantitative analysis is adopted in proposing a development path for the senses of a modal. English translation is given particular attention in the description of Chinese modality and cross-linguistic analyses. One can only know one's own language only if one compares it with other languages. The present study is conducive to a better understanding of English and Chinese. It contributes not only to the investigation of language universals, but also to the study of human cognition and other linguistic or applied linguistic issues.

Chinese Lexical Semantics

Chinese Lexical Semantics
Author: Qin Lu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 731
Release: 2016-01-11
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319271946

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 16th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2015, held in Beijing, China, in May 2015. The 64 regular and 4 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 248 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: lexical semantics; lexical resources; lexicology; natural language processing and applications; and syntax.