| Chinese compound antonym word, also called opposite word, opposite compound, or opposite-and-complementary word, is constituted by two monosyllabic morphemes which are opposite or contrary in their meanings. It has a long history and is applied consistently to both written and spoken Chinese, as a basic way of expressing contradiction or antinomy.According to The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (2005 edition), this dissertation first adds up the total amount of compound antonym words on the contemporary Chinese plane. And then it explores the characteristics of compound antonym words at the aspects of vocabulary meaning, grammatical meaning, rhetorical meaning and cultural connotation.On the basis of further studying the characteristics, this dissertation reveals the magnificent values of compound antonym words during the period of teaching Chinese language, i.e. this kind of words not only enriches Chinese language learner with the linguistic knowledge of the aim language, but also lets the learners accumulate more communicative technique and cultural information of the target language.However, on the other side, it is not an easy task to acquire and command compound antonym word. In this dissertation, a test on the acquisition of compound antonym word was carried out at some American high school, through which great difficulties, such as conjugating the opposite morphemes, ordering the morphemes, comprehending the meaning, judging its part of speech etc, were identified for Chinese language learners whose mother tongue is English.In order to overcome these difficulties during the period of language acquisition and to achieve the values of compound antonym word teaching, this dissertation emphasizes on the timing of teaching compound antonym word, as well as the practice of the combination of the morpheme pedagogy and the whole-word pedagogy. Compound antonym word should be taught through multiple dimensions, such as phonetic, grammatical, semantic, pragmatic and cultural dimensions. |
