HOW IS THE WORD "TAKE" IN CHINESE? ON THE SEMANTICS AND TEACHING OF CORRESPONDING CHINESE VERBS
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) (RUSSIAN FEDERATION)
About this paper:
Conference name: 11th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 12-14 November, 2018
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
This study was conducted within the framework of an interdisciplinary linguo-didactic aspect. The purpose of the article is to describe the semantics of Chinese verbs, which denote the actions "take" in its specific physical manifestation. The relevance in the description of verbs that correspond exactly with this area of extralinguistic reality is caused by the need for practical teaching of the Chinese language and theoretical interpretation of results in a cognitive-semantic manner. As the practice of teaching has shown, an emphasis on this particular area causes the greatest difficulties in the study of the language and, at the same time, these verbs are of interest from the linguistic point of view as the most contrastive in comparison with the languages of a different topology. The novelty of the study is that the semantics of the Chinese language as a whole has been poorly studied and little attention is paid to it in teaching.
The study was conducted within the framework of the semantic-comparative and descriptive methods implemented in the strategy of the lexico-semantic field or lexico-semantic group. Specific techniques include the analysis of definitions of lexico-semantic units found in the explanatory dictionary of modern Chinese.
The conclusions that were made upon results of the study concern the fact that this extralinguistic area in Chinese is sufficiently fractionally nominated by linguistic units and has no dominant representative that would be equal to the verb “Take” in content. The main semantic features (components) inherent in these verbs are the signs associated with the instrument of action, the strategy of its commission, the trajectory of movement and other mainly figurative-visual "pictures" of extremely specific content.
The results of the study are significant not only for teaching the language, but can also be used for general understanding of the features of the verbal semantics of the Chinese language as specifically idioethnic and shedding light on mental-cognitive features of Chinese linguistic thinking and the special worldview of the Chinese.Keywords:
Contemporary Chinese language, teaching Chinese, verbal lexicon, vocabulary definitions, lexico-semantic group of words, semantic features of a word.