A Study On The Asymmetry Of Antonym "Fast/Slow" And Its Research On Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

This paper describes the symmetry and asymmetry of the adjective antonyms "fast/slow" from the perspective of semantic evolution, lexical level, and syntactic level, and investigates the motivation of asymmetric phenomena of "fast/slow". It is based on markedness theory, category theory of cognitive linguistics, metaphor theory, and metonymy theory. We then propose some problems to pay attention to when editing antonyms for Chinese teaching materials, and give some specific teaching strategies of "fast/slow" and a teaching proposal for antonyms.The main content of this paper consists of four parts:Part one is a part of reference review.This section summarizes the research results of the predecessors,introduces the emergence and development of the markedness theory,the research on asymmetry phenomena of modern Chinese, antonyms,antonyms in terms of teaching Chinese as second language and individual studies of "fast/slow".This part also discusses the reason of research topic,the purpose and significance of this paper,research method,and corpus sources.Part two investigates the semantic evolution of "fast/slow" on the diachronic level,defines the the meanings’generation time of’fast/slow",makes explanations for the reason of extended relationship of all the meanings using cognitive linguistics theory.Moreover,this chapter also summarizes the asymmetry on generation time of symmetric meaning,semantic emotional color,the extent of semantic grammaticalization of antonym "fast/slow".Part three mainly analyzes the symmetry and asymmetry on the number of meanings,word formation,frequency and syntactic aspect of "fast/slow" on the synchronic level,and explores the motivation of the asymmetry of antonym "fast/slow" from internal and external aspects of language.Part four specifically investigates the meanings’arrangement of"fast/slow" in Chinese teaching materials,then proposes some suggestions on editing antonyms of Chinese teaching materials. Finally we give some teaching strategies of "fast/slow" and a proposal on antonyms’ teaching based on the markedness theory.