A Study On The Error Of The Chinese Modal Adverbs “X Ran”

Modal adverbs in Chinese have always been the focus and difficulty in teaching Chinese as a foreign language,because they can express the subjective emotion of the speaker,strengthen the tone of the sentence,have relatively vague meanings and have flexible syntactic positions.The modal adverbs “X ran” are similar in form and meaning,that is,they all express the speaker’s subjective affirmative judgment(or inference).International Chinese learners often cannot fully understand and master the usage of such words,and it is easy to make errors when using them.This paper compares and analyzes the commonalities and differences between the modal adverbs“bi ran” “dang ran” “guo ran” and “zi ran” from the perspectives of syntax,semantics and pragmatics.The erroneous corpus of international students is collected through interlanguage corpus and questionnaire survey,and SPSS statistical software is used to carry out difference test analysis,trying to find out the reasons for international students’ acquisition errors,and putting forward relevant teaching suggestions for the specific reasons for errors.The paper first explores the characteristics of four modal adverbs in terms of syntax,semantics and pragmatics.Through the comparison of the syntactic distribution of “bi ran” “dang ran” “guo ran” and “zi ran”,it is found that compared with “dang ran” “guo ran” and “zi ran”,“bi ran” cannot be located before the subject at the beginning of a sentence or at the end of a sentence.It cannot be used alone as a response to a sentence,and the syntactic distribution is the most restricted.Meanwhile,“dang ran” “guo ran” and “zi ran” can be distributed at the beginning,middle and end of a sentence as well as used alone.Then,by discussing the co-occurrence of four adverbs with time adverbs,negative adverbs,sentence-final particles and other modal adverbs,it is found that commonalities and differences are reflected in the co-occurrence components.The semantic part is discussed around the semantic pointing features including front pointing and back pointing.When the modal adverb is located at the end of the sentence or used alone as an answer,it refers semantically forward.When the adverb is located at the beginning of a sentence,in the middle of a sentence or in a compound sentence as a cohesive element,it refers semantically backward.The pragmatic part discusses the focus function,cohesive function,interpersonal function,and it is found that the degree of subjectivity of the four adverbs from strong to weak is “dang ran” “guo ran” “zi ran” and “bi ran”.The interpersonal interaction of “dang ran” is the strongest,“zi ran” or “guo ran” is the second,and “bi ran” is the weakest.Second,from the perspective of language input,the paper examines the distribution of four modal adverbs in 10 sets of teaching materials for TCSL.And it is found that most textbooks include the use of four words as modal adverbs,such as Boya Chinese.However,some textbooks such as Great Wall Chinese do not include the use of all four modal adverbs,which does not meet the specification requirements of Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education and The Graded Syllabus of Chinese Vocabulary and Characters.Of the four modal adverbs,“dang ran” appears the most frequently in all textbooks.In addition,by comparing the distribution frequency of the four modal adverbs in the textbooks and the use frequency of Chinese native speakers,it can be seen that only the distribution frequency in Boya Chinese is more reasonable.Relying on the benefits and drawbacks of the textbooks for TCSL,this chapter analyzes and predicts the difficulties that international students may encounter in acquiring such modal adverbs and the reasons for errors,and provides suggestions for teachers to better use the textbooks to carry out teaching.Thirdly,from the perspective of error investigation,the paper discusses the errors of four modal adverbs in the interlanguage corpus and the questionnaire.First of all,according to the investigation of errors in the interlanguage corpus,the error corpus is classified.The types of errors can be roughly divided into wrong order,missubstitution,misaddition,omission,etc.In the process of teaching,teachers often ignore the explanation of modal adverbs,or learners intentionally avoid the relevant acquisition difficulties and have few opportunities to actually output and use these adverbs,which may lead to the lack of reference corpus and incomplete types of errors in the interlanguage corpus.Therefore,this chapter designs a questionnaire through multiple choice questions,sorting questions and translation questions,aiming to supplement the biased corpus in the interlanguage corpus,and make up for the defect that the biased corpus cannot fully explain the errors of modal adverbs “X ran”acquired by international Chinese learners.Finally,from the perspective of language input and language output,based on the similarities and differences in syntax,semantics and pragmatics of four modal adverbs and the errors of international students,the chapter comprehensively analyzes the reasons for the errors.The main reasons lie in the differences in the input quantity of the four modal adverbs in the textbooks,the improper arrangement of the contents of the textbooks and the complexity of modal adverbs itself,while on the other hand,the avoidance strategies adopted by students in acquisition,the negative transfer of mother tongue and the generalization of the target language.Therefore,attention should be paid to the arrangement of content and acquisition order in the compilation of textbooks.Annotations can be presented in the form of accurate translation,and comparative exercises should be appropriately added.When teaching,teachers should pay attention to strengthening the contrast and analysis of words as well as improving teaching methods.