The Comparison of Negations bu and mei in Mandarin Chinese

• Main Authors: Li-Ning Su, 蘇俐寧
• Other Authors: Professor Szu-I Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09642450933907451366

碩士 === 玄奘大學 === 應用外語系碩士班 === 99 === Abstract The aim of this study will try to discover the differences between Chinese Negation and English Negation. It is difficult for Non Native Chinese Speakers (NNCS) to understand how to use Chinese negations. The differences between Chinese and English negation cause the learners feel difficult and distressed. The subject of this paper is to teach the learners to distinguish the different features of those Chinese negations. When they choose one of the Chinese negations, they must consider the semantic features, syntactic functions, the part to be negated, and the collocation in sentences. There are some double-negations or multi-negations in Chinese that are totally different from those in modern English. In English, part of vocabulary contains negative meaning. This can be divided into the strong part and weak part. On the other hand, the negative adverb not shows the tense and the negative item by the collocations with other words. Learners should choose the suitable Chinese negation according to the categories and features of English verbs and adjectives. More than one negation in one sentence is rarely seen in English. Moreover, the double negation won’t express the positive meaning because language is unlike the Logic. The answer of negative questions is different between Chinese and English. These differences between Chinese and English cause the learners confused. In this paper, we will try to analyze the sentences of Chinese negation and English negation to help the NNCS to learn the features of Chinese negations to reduce the distress for the NNCS. Key words: negation, syntactic function, collocation, negative concord