| Morphemes,as the smallest sound-meaning fixed structures,are universal linguistic units,but morphemes are specific in different languages.Chinese morphemes are often covered under the visual symbol of Chinese characters in written Chinese,so as far as the relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese language is concerned,it is not uncommon to equate Chinese characters with morphemes and to emphasize Chinese characters over morphemes.In the teaching practice of International Chinese Language Education,there is also a phenomenon of not paying enough attention to vocabulary.One of the direct consequences of neglecting morpheme and morpheme teaching is that learners’morpheme competence is low and their morphological awareness and lexical ability are not fully developed.In order to develop learners’ rule-based lexical competence,this study is based on the characteristics of Chinese morphemes,guided by connectionism and complex dynamic system theory,using the combination of quantitative and qualitative,descriptive and explanatory research methods and experimental methods,taking Chinese morphological awareness as the outline,and through a systematic review of Chinese morphemes used in International Chinese Language Education,we investigate the characteristics of morpheme systems that can promote learners’ morphological awareness and lexical competence.The study combines the statistical characteristics of morphemes with the acquisition of morphemes,and investigates the development of learners’morphological awareness and the correlation between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge,and proposes corresponding teaching suggestions.The main contents and findings of this study are as follows:Firstly,the characteristics of Chinese morphemes and the concept of Chinese morphological awareness are theoretically elaborated as the basis of the study.The self-containedness and prominence of Chinese syllables determine that the morpheme is an important structural unit in Chinese,which is no less important than that of word.The cognitive and acquisitive value of morphemes lies in the fact that morphemes are the linkage and key to vocabulary acquisition.Chinese morphological awareness can be summarized in three aspects:the recognition of morphemes form,sound and meaning,the distinction between morphemes（mainly limited to homophones and homographs）,and the structural and meaningful relationships between morphemes when they are combined into words.Secondly,the main characteristics of morphemes for International Chinese Language Education under the framework of morphological awareness are studied.The main conclusions are as follows:（1）Based on the The Graded Chinese Syllables,Characters and Words for the Application of Teaching Chinese to the Speakers of Other Languages,the principles and methods of morpheme division and merging are formulated,and the morpheme attribute database is established.The number,pronunciation,grade,function and word-formation quantity of morphemes are described and counted.（2）Homographs were divided into two categories:homophonic homographs and heterophonic homographs,accounting for 25.83%of the total morphemes.Among them,268 groups of homophonic homographs and 137 groups of heterophonic homographs are dominated by one character and two morphemes,and about a half of homographs are cross-grade morphemes,so the acquisition of homographs is a continuous process.Most of the homophonic homographs are homomorphic due to borrowing,simplification,merging,later origin,derivational differentiation,and foreign origin,while most of the heterophonic homographs are the result of phonological or morphological changes that have been used to date.There are also differences in properties such as grade,functional type,and grade when independently formed into words within a homograph group.（3）Of the 7570 compound words used in International Chinese Language Education,the order from high to low is coordinate compound>modifier-head compound>verb-object compound>adverbial-predicate compound>verb-complement compound>subject-predicate compound>reduplicative compound,and the combination of modifier-head compound and adverbial-predicate compound is subordinate compound>coordinate compound>verb-object compound>verb-complement compound>subject-predicate compound>reduplicative compound,and modification and juxtaposition are the dominant grammatical structure patterns in Chinese compound words.The lexical grammatical categories are not necessarily related to the grammatical structure of compound words.The dominant lexical patterns of nouns,verbs and adjectives are subordinate,coordinate,and coordinate respectively,and the dominant morphemes collocation patterns are all two-by-two combinations of morphemes of the same grammatical category.Among these compound words,the qualia role of the preceding morpheme of the N+N modifier-head compound is,in descending order,formal role>constitutive role>telic role>agentive role>conventionalized attributes,and combination of semantics is absolutely dominant in V+V coordinate compound of verb and A+A coordinate compound of adjective.Thirdly,an experimental study was conducted on the development pattern and influencing factors of Chinese learners’ morphological awareness,and the relationship between morphological awareness and lexical knowledge.The main findings are as follows:（1）The development of different subsystems of Chinese learners’ morpological awareness is imbalanced and unsynchronized.The results of the study indicate that the morphological awareness was basically positively correlated with the Chinese proficiency and developed with the progress of the Chinese proficiency,but the development rate was imbalanced,with both rapid growth and slow improvement periods.The development sequence of different subsystems of morphological awareness is roughly as follows:semantic radical awareness>morphological recognition ability>phonetic radical awareness,homophonic homograph awareness>the grammatical structure awareness of compound words,compound meaning speculation ability>heterophonic homograph awareness.The awareness of the grammatical structure of compound words develops late and the awareness of heterophonic homograph lags behind seriously.（2）The effect of different subsystems of morphological awareness on lexical knowledge was different.It is found that semantic radical awareness,phonetic radical awareness,morpheme recognition ability and compound word semantic center awareness have no significant influence on the lexical knowledge.The two subsystems of homograph awareness,homophonic homograph awareness and heterophonic homograph awareness,had significant and important effects on the lexical knowledge,as did compound word grammatical structure awareness,but the grammatical structure awareness had no significant effect on the lexical knowledge after controlling for all variables such as the ability to differentiate homographs.Finally,based on the weaknesses in the development of morphological awareness and the correlation between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge,corresponding pedagogical responses are proposed.The study has shown that enriching learners’morphemes is a crucial factor in the development of morphological awareness and lexical competence,and this should be done in two ways.One is to improve learners’ level and ability to use phonetic radicals.This can be done by making full use of phonetic radical and phonetic radical family characters to recognize morphemes,seeking memory clues and cognitive strategies from multiple perspectives,and developing learners’ awareness of phonetic radicals and phonological regularity.The second is to strengthen the ability to distinguish homographs,especially the ability to distinguish heterophonic homographs.For homophonic homographs,it is necessary to strengthen the recognition and discrimination of their semantics;for heterophonic homographs,firstly,it is necessary to strengthen learners’ rational understanding of the importance of tones,and secondly,it is necessary to pay attention to the differentiation and memorization of the pronunciation of heterophonic homographs,especially the recognition of the pronunciation of heterophonic homographs with small families of high grades that appear later.The innovations and values of this study lie in:From the perspective of linguistic typology,we examine the commonality and individuality of Chinese morphemes,point out that the characteristics of Chinese morphemes are derived from the self-sufficiency and prominence of Chinese tonal syllables,and theoretically analyze that the essence of morphological awareness lies in the close relationship between Chinese characters,morphemes and vocabularies.It emphasizes that morphemes are no less important than words in Chinese,and lays a theoretical foundation for the study of morphemes in this thesis,which is a deepening of the theory of the relationship between Chinese characters and vocabulary and morpheme theory.Under the booming situation of International Chinese Language Education,the Chinese morpheme attribute database created based on Grading is also applicable to Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education,which has been implemented in July 2021.This is an innovation of research materials.At present,there are few research results on morpheme attributes based on these two national standards,and the database created in this study can serve the research on morpheme and vocabulary acquisition and teaching research.The research on morpheme attributes responds to the general situation of International Chinese Language Education development,and is of great significance and value to the construction of the knowledge system of International Chinese Language Education and the development of International Chinese Language Education.The use of descriptive and inferential statistical methods,especially the analysis of variance and regression analysis,and the combination of morpheme attribute studies and studies related to learners’ morphological awareness are innovative in research methodology.This study found more comprehensive facts about learners’morphological awareness development and vocabulary acquisition that could not be observed from a single perspective,and the conclusions drawn are more objective and realistic,providing an example for the study of second language acquisition. |
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