从汉语“是”和英语“BE”的对比看汉语国际教学语法

International Chinese Grammar Teaching from the Perspective of the Difference Between Chinese 是 and English BE

汉语国际教学的一个短板是对教学具体所需要的语法认识不足,例如汉语和英语分别都有系词"是"和"be"(am/is/are/was/were)。西方语言系词因人称、主语单复数和时态不同而有种种形态变化,但是汉语没有这类变化,而且形容词可以直接做谓语,不需要系词,理应语法简单、容易学习。可是令人吃惊的是,国际学生作文中最常见的错误(60%以上)和系词有关。从中国人使用汉语系词的特点来看,汉语系词"是"主要用在两个名词短语之间(80%以上),其中一个名词短语表示另一个名词短语限制集的指称性成员,简而言之,系词表示两个名词短语的关系是"名词一所指是名词二所指集的成员"。本文认为,就学习汉语系词而言,这才是国际学生必须知道的语法知识。可是在目前的汉语课本中相关的语法讲解里,基本没有这条重要的语法知识。相反,大都忽视了国际学生没有汉语母语语感这个特点,不必要地却过分地强调汉语系词的省略。

A critical inadequacy in international Chinese language teaching is a failure to recognize the appropriate grammatical knowledge the students need.For example,in Western languages a copula commonly varies in agreement with the gender and plurality of the subject,as well as the tense,of a sentence,such as be(am/is/are/was/were).In constrast,the Chinese copula是is rather simple and should be easy to learn as the language does not have any agreement systems as in Western languages.However,surprisingly,most errors(above 60%)in the compositions by Chinese learners involve the correct use of the copula.It turns out that the Chinese mostly use the copula是between two noun phrases(above 80%).One NP refers to the referential member(s)of a restricted set signaled by the other NP.That is,one NP is a member of the other NP.This important piece of information is critically missing in nearly all the grammatical notes of the current Chinese language textbooks.Moreover,the current practice tends to have neglected the learners’lack of native intuition and unnecessarily overemphasized the deletion of a Chinese copula.