A Comparison of the Semantic Systems of Chinese and Thai words: from One-Syllable Verbs which are about vision

Abstract

This article compares the semantic systems of Chinese and Thai words by studying from the meaning of one-syllable verbs which are about vision. The objective of this study was to study the difference and generalization of the semantic system of Chinese and Thai words. The verbs studied refer to the meaning from the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Sixth revision), the Royal Institute's Dictionary (2011) and Chinese-Thai Dictionary (2016), comparing 3 aspects of the verbs: 1. The semantic group of verbs 2. The list of meanings of verbs 3. The ability to form verbs.

         The results of a comparative study can be seen that different languages have a semantic system that expresses both the same and different meanings. Both Chinese and Thai languages have identity systems of meanings. Chinese has more verbs which are about vision than Thai. This result from a logic or a detailed idea of how to form words. Along with the Chinese language has a long history and evolution. Therefore, Word  formation is more numerous. For this reason, from the study of the semantic system of Chinese and Thai language, whether it is the dimension of the words group, or the ability to form words and the number of lists of meanings of the verb groups all reflect different semantic systems. The same aspect is the one-syllable verbs which are about vision in Chinese and Thai can find most hostesses or comparisons. And this phenomenon is considered a linguistic phenomenon of all languages.

Keywords: Chinese and Thai Comparison,  Semantic System,  one-syllable verbs which are about vision