A Corpus Study On HSK First-Degree Psych Verb Collocations In Chinese/Non-Chinese Cultural Circles

The last three decades have seen the widespread of Chinese language to the world. An increasing number of courses for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language have been opened at home; meanwhile, more and more Confucius Classrooms and Confucius Institutes have also been set up abroad. Nonetheless, there still exist quite a few obstacles in the way for instruction and acquisition of Chinese as a Second Language. Chinese verbs, especially Chinese psych verbs, have always been headaches of foreign Chinese learners and domestic Chinese teachers to foreign students in China. Foreign Chinese learners, no matter from the Chinese-Cultural Circle or the Non-Chinese Cultural Circle, quite often have problems with the use and the usages of these psych verbs and so collocations errors frequently occur.The chief goals of this paper are to find out the similarities and differences in Chinese psych verb collocations among foreign Chinese learners with different language-cultural backgrounds, either from the Chinese-Cultural Circle or Non-Chinese Cultural Circle, and the language-cultural influences on these similarities and differences.Three questions are asked in this paper to serve this purpose:a. What are the general frequencies of all the First-Degree psych verbs?b. What are the collocation similarities and differences (on Collocation Types, Collocate Varieties, Collocation Errors, and Collocation Correlation) of First-Degree Chinese psych verbs under each sub-category in foreign learners of Chinese from Chinese Cultural Circle countries (here Japan) compared with learners from Non-Chinese Cultural Circle countries (here the UK), with reference to Chinese native speakers?c. What role do different language-cultural backgrounds play in these foreign Chinese learners'acquisition of Chinese psych verb collocations?This paper first reviews literature on the four aspects: on Chinese psych verbs, on Chinese verb collocations, on Chinese psych verb collocations and on Chinese language in Chinese/ Non-Chinese Cultural Circles, finding that the current researches have seldom focused on Chinese psych verb collocations among foreign Chinese learners from Chinese/ Non-Chinese Cultural Circles, which has made this paper more meaningful. Utilizing two available domestic Chinese corpora ---Modern Chinese General Balanced Corpus and Beijing Language and Culture University HSK Corpus of Interlanguage, and using three computer tools ---ICTCLAS 1.0, AntConc 3.2.1 and Loglikelihood and Chi-square Calculator 1.0, this paper conducts a corpus study of First-Degree Chinese psych verbs in the HSK Syllabus of Chinese Words, 26 ones in total. It first studies the general frequencies of these 26 psych verbs in Beijing Language and Culture University HSK Corpus of Interlanguage, choosing out four most frequent ones under all the sub-categories (controllable/ uncontrollable psychological state verbs, psychological activity verbs and psychological change verbs). Further study is down on these four psych verbs among foreign Chinese learners from the UK and Japan, focusing on similarities and differences of four aspects including Collocation Types, Collocate Varieties, Collocation Errors, and Collocation Correlation. The language-cultural influences on these similarities and differences have also been discussed.Results and discussions show that:a. The most-frequently-used controllable psychological state verb, uncontrollable psychological state verb, psychological activity verb and psychological change verb are xiang (to miss; to consider), renwei (to consider, to regard as), zhuyi (to notice) and tongyi (to agree) respectively;b. Collocations concerning psychological state verbs are more frequently used than other psych verbs in both the Japanese and British situations; collocation types and collocate varieties are quite rich under both situations; British Chinese leaners have made fewer collocation compared to Japanese Chinese learners, but the latter have higher correlation with the reference native Chinese speakers;c. Language-cultural backgrounds have significant influences in learning Chinese psych verb collocations, as can be seen in the four aspects: agreement of collocation, lack of common collocations, adding of uncommon collocations and mismatches of collocations.In the end, implications for Chinese psych verb collocation instruction and acquisition have been pointed out in this paper, along with research limits and future research perspectives.