Descrotors Chinese'is Designed to Introduce ESL Teacheiito Manof The

Descrotors Chinese'is Designed to Introduce ESL Teacheiito Manof The

,DOCUMENT BESOT y .ki 105 774' / . FL 006 872. ' 4. , \ ,TITLE A''Contrastive Study'of,,English and Mandarin . Chinese.- INSTITUTION .Defense Language Inst., Monteiey,'Calif. PUB DATE NOV 74 NOTE 228p. AVAILABLE PEON Director, ,Defense Language` Institute, OresidiO of Monterey's, CA 0940 (with speolfid peasissiony- EDEs PRICE MF-$0.,46,MC Not'Available from EDRS. TIUS-POSTAGg DEscROToRs Adjectives; Adverbs; *Contrastive-Linguistios DaScriptiir4 Linguistics; Detertipers,(Langua§esf4\1 *English (Second Language); FOrm'Clesses (Languages); Grammar; Idioms; *Interference (Language Learning)'; ,Intonation; *MandarinChinese; Morphology (Languages); Nominals;\Phrase Structure; Sentence Structure; *Structural Analyiis; Suffixes; A*Suprasegmentals; Uncommonly TaughtLanguages; Verbs; Vocabulary ABSTRACT This contrastive analysis of.English and Mandarin . Chinese'is designed to introduce ESL teacheiito manof the fundamental Aiffetences between Chinese and- English. This material is intended to'asist'Ahe teacher in defining the problems that Chinese speakers4re likely to hiave in learning English. The.introduction Includes information on the various dialects\'and subdialects of °Chinese: Part:one.tdeals With'phoiology, including segmental -and suprasegmental-features. Part two.dealSwith morphology, part-three wi"*entence patterns, part foui with verb phrases, and part five p hrases. Par six discusses vocabularLproblems -Chinese - :::ip0"akersencounter earning English. (AM) -A A 1 ; 1 .PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL BYMICRO. LY HAS BEEN GRANTEDBY , t USDEPAR TMENT OF HEALTH EDUCATION a WELFARE NATIONAL' INSTITUTE OF v GANIZA ONS OPERA EDUCTION TO ERIC AND REPRO INGUNDER AGREEMENT WITHTHE NA THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN EDUCATION DOCED EXkftl,LY A. RECEIVED/ROM TfONAL INSTITUTE OF THE/ PER50% ?ORGANIZATION ORIGIN FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE OPINIONS THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRESPERMIS A AT NG IT PEiNTS OF VIEW OR OWNER tk STATED DO NOT NECESSARILYREPRE SION OF THE COPYRIGHT SENT OFFICIAL NATIONALINSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY 4 tat C 0 O 4 DEFENSEONGUAGEINSTITUTE ./ THISPUBLICATION IS FOR USE BY THE FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENTS OF THE DEFENSE.LANGUAGE INSTITUTE'ASAPART OF THE DEFENSE LANGUAGE PROGRAM. INQUIRIES CONCERNING THESEMATERIALS,INCLUDING REQUESTS FOR COPI,ES OR AUTHORITYTO'REPRODUCE MATERIALS CONTAINED HEREIN SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO DIRECTOR,'DEUNSEAANGUAGE INSTITUTE, PRE$IDIO OP MONTEREY , CALIFORNIA93940:: v V CS V 1 tiorvIn J R. KO Co e1, US Di to-r 4 I ;'f r- e Pi. to, - a ACONTRASTIVESTUDY -OF sENGLI§HANIYMANDARIITCHINESE . 0 1, Novembei 1974 DEFENSE LANGUAG TNeTITUTE ( .,-, 'I 004 1 I .'ACIMOWLEDGEMENT----- This study was preparddby the Contrastive Analysis Project, Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan,, under Contract #F41609.-69-C-0004 for the Defense Language' Institute in 1969.- !. The development team1 consistedI of J. C. Catford, Projegt Director; Joe Darwin Palmer, Principal Investigator; James Et Dew, English-Chinese Consultant and Editor; Roberta Greenberg Barry, Hwa Liang Cheng; Vivian Ling Hsu and Ying-Che Li,Research'AssiStants. w. O ii 0 0 k PREFACE It is,a truism to state thawe tend to appraise any human behavior, either consciouly or, unconsciously, in terms of.our own field of reference. This tendency is,particularly true of lan- guage_behavior;_we alwaysapproach a second langUage,in terms of our first language. Our abilitY.to learn a second language then his to a greater orllesser extent, by our grounding -in-our own-native language. / 6 ., " Perhaps an analogy to architecture will 'exemplify this in- terference more clearly. The acquisition of a first language in childhood is the fofindation upbn- which our ability to speak our - 'native language is .built. SaY thatEnglish is like a convention for examEhe, and Chinese like a skyscraper., These two buildings differ not only in heir superstructure, but in their "fpundatIons as well: Learnin a second language then is very Much like trying to construct a new building with the, wront, kind of foundation. (Thus. a Chines student learning English as "a s. and language is like someone irying to build a convention ball sn the foundation of a skyscraper, and, conversely, an Ameriean-tr-g- ,ing to learn Chinese as a second language is like.somddne trying to build a skyscrap6on the foundation of a convention hall. In both cases, the greatest source of difficulty is not that the su- perstructures differ, but that the foundat'ions It is the purpose of this manual, then, to introduce the English teacher to many of the ways in which Chinewand English differ fundamentally. ,It ~is hoped that the material presented / here will assist the'teacher in defining the problems,that Chi- // 'nese speakers are likely to have. in learning English as a second/ ,language. Furthermore, by contrasting the difference in the pat7 terns and structures of the two languages, it is hoped that the teacher,I,Wil be able to present his material more lucidly and - \effectpery tb the Chinese student. \ , This manual abounds in remarks,such as, "The Chinese len:- guacie does not have...,' Chinese studdnts have great difficulty..., and, the Chinese speaker is liable to make errors like..." At no time are these remarks intendedto be construed as critical of or condetcending-to_ the Chinese people or language.Anyone with linguistic training will know how difficult it is to compare the degree ,of "difficulty", "sophistication",. or "logic" between any two languages..It ins not b6cauie of these qualities, therefore, tfiat,English and Chinese differ, but because 'these languages-are historically unrelated and geographically distant.A'man41 de-. voted to the teaching of Chinese to native English speakers, then, would contain.many remarks on the mistakes and difficulties thatfpglish speakers would have. It is very important, there"- fore', that the teacher does not approach the probleMs which a 'Chinese student has in -learning English in a 'critical or condes- cending manner, but rather with patience and understanding. , ,eg 6 The reader should be aware that theChinese -lahguageOxists.7 ; in many varieties. Recent scholarship divides contemporary spoken.Chinese into eight major dialects, or more accurately, dialect groups, each of which can be further divided into.sub- dialects,'and even sub-subdialects. The basic grahlmaticai. struc- -ture. of all these varieties if Chinese is vietually the same, and even in detail there is a very high degree of sim4arity among them. There is more divergence in vocabulary,. especially ithat of non-literary; non-technical-everyday speech. In honology, also, basic structural characteristics are shared. The [Pattern o'f"A, monosyllabic morphemes, each with a distinctiv't he, limited. distribution of Rhonettie types in the es 6cially syl- lable-final consohOhts, and very little or .not4u tering of con- sonants, is makn:EaZ-ne0 throughout all the dialedt of Chinese- In phonological' 'de,VO, however, therearemarked.' ifferences among thejfiajor dialects. These differences are i fact so great that, together,with.difierences in vocabulary, the prod6ce mu- tual uninelli4ibility.among the major dialect By far the largeS1 sintJ.e dialect group, both in terms of-- '6humber OE speakers and geographical areas in which t is, spoken, is, Northern Chinese, or Mandarin, which is sp-Oceq ith relatively minor variations over all of China north of the River and in .theso4hwestern.paft of thecountry. Northernhinese is tale- native tongue of.an estimated 70 per cent of the po ulation Of I China, and it'is a variety of Northern Chinese--tha of the capi- tal city Peking--which forms the basis for the nati nal' standard -7 ngilage. ,The non-Mandarin dialects of Chinese are spoke in the -' southeastern provinces, especially along the seacoast.' The lar- -?gest of these, in terms of numbets o£ speakers, ische Wu gtoup, pxwhich the speech of the gre,t7cityi,of Shanghai,belongs. Sec- ond is the Cantonese grodp, which includes the standard Cantonese of CantOkCity and the British colony-of Hong Kong. Most of the Shopkeepers in Ameri6g's Chinatowns speak one-or another subdia- lect of Cantonese.. Wu is spoken by, about 8.4 per cent of the _pCpulation of China, and Cantonese by approximately five per cent. These seem like rather small,figuresy butin a population of 7.60. million (1966 estimate), it means that there are around 62 mil - -._4 lion speakers of Wu, which is more than the population of the Mnittd_Kiudom, Italy, or France; and Cantonese, with around 38 million,, has more speakers than the population Of Spain. Another '' iimportant dialect is Sou hern Min, which is spoken in the south- erp.part of Fukien province and by,approximately eighty per cerIt. OE'Caiwan's populattokof thirteen million. While 297per cent 'of the population have as their mother tongue a non-Mandarin dialect (about one per,cent speakno/i -Chi- nese languages), many of these--especially the younger genera- tion- -speak Mandarin as a second language. Since the adYent of the government of, the People''s Republic of China in 1949, Man- darin has been vigorously promoted throughout mainland China as ' the official common medi9m of communication and as the language 1V o OIj 1 a N of instruction in the school systems. And on'Taiwan it has been promoted by the government of the Republic of China with 06h success that now virtually all the youth of the island speak Man- darin. In these efforts, the standard language taught in the''. school systems both'onthe mainland of _China and in Taiwan is de-. fined as being based an the dialect of Peking. It is this Stan- dard Mandarin that we haiGe taken as the object of our comparison with English in this 'handbook. It Must be realized, however, that this standard ii to some extent only an ideal. There is i considerable variation in the degree to.which thit ideal is ap- proached in practice. When a Chinese whose native tongue isa j non-Mandarip dialect learns the standard language'he will experii- ence inter rence from his native'. dialect, with the result that!. ..he will speak Mandarin.

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