| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 華語文教學碩士學位學程 === 101 === Previous studies ( e.g., Chao 1968, Tai and Wang 1990, Cheng and Sybesma 1999, Liang 2006, Her and Hsieh 2010, Lai 2011) contend that Mandarin classifiers are different from Mandarin measure words. We thereby contend that the strategies about teaching classifiers or measure words should be differentiated and this study aims at providing some teaching suggestions regarding Chinese classifiers. Chinese classifiers can profile the essential features of nouns, and this means there is a restricted meaning relationship between Chinese classifiers and their collocating nouns. But Chinese measure words offer quantity meaning to nouns and can collocate with most nouns. From the perspective of math, Chinese classifiers are equal to number “1”, while Chinese measure words express measure concepts other than “1”. (Liang 2006, Her and Hsieh 2010, Lai 2011)
On the basis of these theoretical studies, this thesis re-examines three representative studies about teaching Mandarin measure words and Chinese classifiers (Wang 1947, 1987; Lu 2007; He 2008) and a text book, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese. We found that those studies and the text book didn’t differentiate Mandarin Chinese classifiers from measure words. There are 33 classifiers among Wang’s 41 measure words; 53 classifiers among Lu’ 140 measure words; 71 classifiers among He’s 117 measure words . As for in Practical Audio-Visual Chinese , there are 46 classifiers among their 117 measure words.
This study finds that Mandarin classifiers are much fewer than Mandarin measure words. And this is because Mandarin classifiers can only collocate with certain groups of nouns and thus highlight the essential features of the nouns ( Her and Hsieh 2010, Lai 2011). This thesis displays two contributions. First, we present the teaching order according to three norms:the degree of abstract, the range of meaning, and the frequency of using. This teaching order is about 61 commonly-used Mandarin classifiers.We found that the elementary school Chinese text books and Practical Audio-Visual Chinese don’t arrange their classifiers according to these norms nor do they according to any logic norms.Besides, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese don’t explain the semantic feature of classifiers in a systemic way.
Second, we present suggestions about teaching classifiers to students of different Mandarin proficiency on the basis of our teaching order.
|
|---|
