A Study On The Patterns Of High-frequency Monosyllable Orientational Nouns In Modern Chinese

As a special subcategory of modern Chinese,the orientational noun has its own specific research value.Although the research results of orientational nouns are abundant,no scholars have yet described their usage in detail using pattern grammar theory.In this paper,we took the high-frequency monosyllabic orientational nouns"上/中/下/内/里/外/前/后"as the object of study,and extracted their patterns based on the Modern Chinese Common Annotation Corpus of the National Language Committee by using Python and other analysis software.Then analyzed and described the semantic and register features of the patterns.The results of the pattern analysis were applied to the practice of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.The main text is divided into four parts.The first part identified two common first-level patterns and four second-level patterns of the eight orientational nouns.By analyzing the semantic features of nouns,verbs and prepositions selected by the first-level pattern,it was concluded that"（p）+np+nd"has the semantic function of indicating the range state meaning,and"（p）+vp+nd"has the semantic function of indicating the event state meaning.The second part identified four specific first-level patterns of the eight orientational nouns and their four second-level patterns.After summing up the semantic functions of the four first-level patterns,it was found that"上/下/前/后+（m）+（q）+（np）"is mainly used to express range,"（p）+a+中/里/外"is mainly used to express state and range,and"p_{方向/范围类}+上/下/内/里/外/前/后"is mainly used to lead out direction and range,and"mq+内/里/外/前/后"is mainly used to express quantity range.The third part examined the generality of text distribution and the tendency of register selection.It was found that:“mq+内/里/外/前/后”“（p）+vp+nd”“上/下/前/后+（m）+（q）+（np）”“（p）+np+nd”have higher generality and relatively balanced in the text distribution;“（p）+a+中/里/外”“p_{方向/范围类}+上/下/内/里/外/前/后”have lower generality,which tend to be distributed in humanities and social sciences texts,among which”（p）+a+中/里/外”tends to be distributed in literature,art and society texts,and"p_{方向/范围类}+上/下/内/里/外/前/后"tends to be distributed in literature and art texts.In the fourth part,the necessity and feasibility of applying the patterns of orientational nouns and their features of semantic and register to teach Chinese as a foreign language were explored,and the classroom instructional design was carried out with the pattern“mq+内/里/外”as an example.This paper showed that the study of the patterns of orientational nouns can provide finer information on word usage for teaching Chinese as a foreign language,including the syntactic,semantic and register environments in which orientational nouns occur,and help scholars to use Chinese better.