The Cognitive Neural Mechanism Of Antonymous Compound Words And Synonymous Compound Words Of Intermediate Level’s Chinese As A Second Language Learners

Antonymous compound words are unique language phenomenon in Chinese,which is a crucial and difficult task in teaching Chinese as a second language.In contrast,synonymous compound words are the opposite of antonymous compound words which share same grammatical structures and hold opponent semantic relationships between morphemes.In teaching Chinese as a second language,we found that the liberal meanings of the morphemes of antonymous compound words and the unpredictability of the internal semantics of the whole words make it more difficult for Chinese second language learners to learn antonymous compound words.To solve this problem,we investigate cognitive neural mechanisms of antonymous compound words and synonymous compound words by taking intermediate-level second Chinese speakers as subjects.This study uses event-related potentials to investigate cognitive neural mechanism of antonymous compound words and synonymous compound words through lexical decision task and the key point is the presentation of synonymous and antonymous relationships in mental lexicon.This thesis compares intermediatelevel second Chinese learners with native Chinese speakers,finds the differences in vocabulary recognition between intermediate Chinese proficiency and proficient proficiency,so as to make reasonable suggestions for teaching.It concludes as follows:1)Native Chinese speakers can recognize the semantic relationship between morphemes at an early stage where as second Chinese learners cannot.Native Chinese speakers have significant differences between the antonymous compound words and the synonymous compound words in N170 and show left-lateralized effect,while second Chinese learners do not have such significant differences.However,Chinese learners have significant differences between the antonymous compound words and the synonymous compound words in terms of behavioral data.The thesis suggests that in the teaching of intermediate Chinese vocabulary to foreigners,it should help learners to establish morpheme awareness.2)The semantic field is an important factor that affects the vocabulary storage or extraction of the mental lexicon.We find that the connections between morphemes of the synonymous semantic field are closer than those between morphemes of the antonymous semantic field.The N400 amplitude of Chinese native speakers can reflect the semantic difference between synonymous and antisense relations,showing that the average amplitude of antonymous compound words is significantly stronger than the average amplitude of synonymous compound words.At the same time,this phenomenon is also consistent with the N400 lexical verification view.In short,we suggest that students learn vocabulary from the perspective of semantic field,and teachers help students to establish a semantic connection network and strengthen the ability to make inferences.In sum,this thesis proposes that the role of the semantic fields should be emphasized in teaching the antonymous compound words and the synonymous compound words.Teachers can use the semantic field to help students learn this special pair of linguistic phenomena,or the teachers can establish the semantic field to meet the needs of students for quickly expanding their vocabulary.