A Semantic, Discourse, and Pragmatic Analysis of “Yushi” and “Suoyi” in Chinese and Its Pedagogical Implications

• Main Authors: Chang, Chieh-Yang, 張婕洋
• Other Authors: Chen, Jyun-Gwang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/b34qu3

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學系 === 105 === This research adopted the theoretical framework of Halliday’s meta-function, encompassing ideational, textual, and interpersonal functions (Halliday 1985, 1994). Empirical data was collected to explore the semantic, discourse, and pragmatic aspects of Mandarin Chinese “yushi” and “suoyi”. Moreover, the results of this research findings are applied for pedagogical purposes. This thesis is substantiated by empirical data, composed of 400 tokens of data from two sets of corpora in Taiwan, in which 200 tokens are collected from UDN Data and 200 tokens from Chinese Work Sketch Engine. Based on former studies related to “yushi” and “suoyi”, the present research further explores the semantic features between the two and their differences in discourse are distinguished. With regard to the semantic aspect, the semantic features of “yushi” are “realis (actualization)”, “dynamics”, and “new change”. However, “suoyi” has none of the above core features. Moreover, the essential semantic difference between “yushi” and “suoyi” is in the aspect of “new change”. “Yushi” highly involves new change, whereas “suoyi” only shows very low percentage. At the discourse level, “yushi” has a smaller scope, but “suoyi” exhibits varying results across different corpora. In the corpus with mainly written style, “suoyi” has a smaller scope, but in the other corpus with both written and spoken styles, “suoyi” exhibits a larger scope. Additionally, in terms of semantic reduction in the two connectors, “yushi” has undergone less of the grammaticalization process, while “suoyi” has undergone more of it. Most of the use of “yushi” in the present study is that of a logical connector, thus rarely exhibiting the phenomenon of semantic reduction. On the other hand, a large number of semantic reduction is found in “suoyi” in this study. Moreover, some of the instances of the connector “suoyi” appear to function as a discourse marker in the present research, although the frequency is quite low. At the pragmatic level, when “yushi” and “suoyi” function as semantically reduced connectors, the former carries a weaker tone of speaking, while the latter shows no particular preference. Lastly, in terms of pedagogical purposes, four L2 Chinese textbooks commonly used in Taiwan are reviewed based on the findings of this study. And a series of teaching suggestions are further provided.