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Chapter 8. Constraints on the collocational behaviors of Chinese near-synonyms

A corpus-based analysis
  • Jia Yang
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Current Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse
This chapter is in the book Current Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse

Abstract

This paper reports a corpus-based study to examine how Chinese near-synonyms choose their typical collocates. Near-synonyms commonly misused by English-speaking learners of Chinese were selected for analysis. Results obtained from the corpora (the Chinese Internet Corpus by the University of Leeds and the Lancaster corpus of Mandarin Chinese) indicate that the collocational behaviors of the selected synonyms are constrained by their own semantic, grammatical, prosodic, stylistic and pragmatic features and hence are explainable to second/foreign learners. Findings of this study will contribute to the design of collocation/synonym dictionary as well as the instruction of collocations as a second/foreign language.

Abstract

This paper reports a corpus-based study to examine how Chinese near-synonyms choose their typical collocates. Near-synonyms commonly misused by English-speaking learners of Chinese were selected for analysis. Results obtained from the corpora (the Chinese Internet Corpus by the University of Leeds and the Lancaster corpus of Mandarin Chinese) indicate that the collocational behaviors of the selected synonyms are constrained by their own semantic, grammatical, prosodic, stylistic and pragmatic features and hence are explainable to second/foreign learners. Findings of this study will contribute to the design of collocation/synonym dictionary as well as the instruction of collocations as a second/foreign language.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Chinese discourse from diverse perspectives 1
  5. Chapter 2. New words in contemporary Chinese language use 5
  6. Chapter 3. Usage based language change and exemplar representations in Beijing Mandarin Chinese 27
  7. Chapter 4. Contextual variations of internal and external modifications in Chinese requests 57
  8. Chapter 5. Some interactional functions of Yinwei -clauses in Mandarin Chinese conversation 81
  9. Chapter 6. Preliminaries to delicate matters 105
  10. Chapter 7. Chinese near-synonyms jian (建), zao (造), gai (蓋) ‘to build’ revisited 137
  11. Chapter 8. Constraints on the collocational behaviors of Chinese near-synonyms 155
  12. Chapter 9. Genericity and sentences with an AP state complement in Mandarin Chinese 177
  13. Chapter 10. Kinship metaphors in the Chinese construction A shi B zhi fu/mu 199
  14. Chapter 11. The classification of Chinese time expressions from Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspectives 221
  15. Chapter 12. Being a Kam in China 245
  16. Chapter 13. Specialised corpora for Chinese language education in Singapore 265
  17. Index 297
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.10.08yan

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Chinese discourse from diverse perspectives 1
  5. Chapter 2. New words in contemporary Chinese language use 5
  6. Chapter 3. Usage based language change and exemplar representations in Beijing Mandarin Chinese 27
  7. Chapter 4. Contextual variations of internal and external modifications in Chinese requests 57
  8. Chapter 5. Some interactional functions of Yinwei -clauses in Mandarin Chinese conversation 81
  9. Chapter 6. Preliminaries to delicate matters 105
  10. Chapter 7. Chinese near-synonyms jian (建), zao (造), gai (蓋) ‘to build’ revisited 137
  11. Chapter 8. Constraints on the collocational behaviors of Chinese near-synonyms 155
  12. Chapter 9. Genericity and sentences with an AP state complement in Mandarin Chinese 177
  13. Chapter 10. Kinship metaphors in the Chinese construction A shi B zhi fu/mu 199
  14. Chapter 11. The classification of Chinese time expressions from Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspectives 221
  15. Chapter 12. Being a Kam in China 245
  16. Chapter 13. Specialised corpora for Chinese language education in Singapore 265
  17. Index 297
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