Characters%20and%20Words:%20Understanding%20the%20Acquisition%20of%20Chinese%20Vocabulary

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Characters and Words Understanding the
Acquisition of Chinese Vocabulary

• John Jing-hua Yin
• University of Vermont
• john.yin_at_uvm.edu

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What is vocabulary?
It is all the words of a language. It is the
sum of words used by, understood by, or at the
command of a particular person. --from the
American Heritage Dictionary
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What is a word?
A word is a sound or a combination of sounds, or
its representation in writing or printing, that
symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may
consist of a single morpheme or of a combination
of morphemes. --from the American
Heritage Dictionary
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What does it mean to know a word?
1) Form Spoken What does the word
sound like? (R) How is the word
pronounced? (P) Writing What does the word
look like? (R) How is the word
written? (P) 2) Position Syntactic In
what patterns does the word occur? (R) In
what patterns must the word be used? (P) Semantic
What words can be expected before or after it?
(R) What words must be used with it?
(P)
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What does it mean to know a word?
3) Function Frequency How common is
the word? (R) How often should it be
used? (P) Appropriateness Where would we
expect this word to be used? (R)
Where can this word be used? (P) 4)
Meaning Concept What does the
word mean? (R) What word should
be used to express this meaning? (P)
Associations What other words does this word make
us think of? (R) What other words should we
use instead of this one?(P) --I.S.P. Nation
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What is a Chinese word?
A Chinese word is formed by one or more Chinese
characters, almost all of which are morphemes.
Many of the Chinese characters can be words by
themselves however, most of the modern Chinese
words are disyllabic or multi-syllabic with two
or more Chinese characters.
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Chinese Words in the Vocabulary Conspectus of HSK
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Monosyllabic Words vs. Multisyllabic Words in HSK
Vocabulary
???? 8,840
???? 6,902
???? 1,938
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Characters vs. Words in HSK Vocabulary
The HSK vocabulary has 8840 words. These 8840
words are formed by 2907 characters.
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Three Lists
1) Appearance Frequency List (AF) 2) Natural
Acquisition List (NA) 3) Basic Characters List
(BC)
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Most frequently used Chinese characters
1 - 100 ?????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
????????? 101 - 200 ????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????
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Words acquired by a kid at 18 months old
Monosyllabic ??? ?????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????? (140) Disyllabic ??? ?? ?? ?? ??
(4) --Recorded by Yin in Jan. 1998
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Basic Chinese characters radicals
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????????????
(149) ???????????????????????? (25)
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Comparisons of the Three Lists
1) Appear in all the three lists ????? (5) 2)
Appear in the NA and the BC lists ?????????????
(13) 3) Appear in the BC and the AP
lists ??????????????? ?????????????? (29) 4)
Appear in the NA and the AP lists ????? (5)
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What characters does PCR Lessons 1-15 have?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????(75 characters in at
least one of the lists) ?????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????
?(76 characters not in any of the lists)
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Some thoughts as the conclusion
1) To reduce the cognitive overload for Chinese
beginners, offer a separate course on the basic
knowledge of the Chinese characters to establish
the link between the form and the meaning of
characters. 2) To enlarge students Chinese
vocabulary, we must emphasize the teaching of
Chinese characters (form, meaning, position,
function) when teaching words 3) Receptive skills
and productive skills related to vocabulary
should not be equally demanded and treated in
teaching words. 4) Provide ample input and
conduct massive practice for character
recognition and production