汉语的双元机制——对汉语教学单位的思考

The Dual-Unit System in Chinese: Thoughts on the Units of Chinese Language Teaching

汉语存在两种基本单位:字是语素的天然表示者,词是句子的实际构造者。二者各具优劣,各有适合之处。通过字与词的载义率的比较,可以发现仅仅依靠字,不能正确理解词语。但大部分不单用的字实际上是一种"休眠词",对汉语的深入养成具有重要价值。字—词双元才是汉语养成与汉语母语者心理中的运行机制。

In Chinese language there are two types of basic units.Characters are the natural indicators of morphemes, whereas words are the components of sentences. Both characters and words have advantages and disadvantages and are suitable to be the basic units in some ways. A comparison between the capabilities of the two in terms of signaling meaning shows two things. On the one hand, it is unlikely to understand lexicon correctly solely based on characters. On the other hand, most characters that never occur alone belong to what can be termed the ＂dormant words＂; they would be valuable to Chinese language learning. Therefore, the dual-unit system, i.e., the one based on both characters and words, is the real operating mechanism of Chinese language learning and the one with respect to the mentality of Chinese native speakers