RESEARCH ON MODERN CHINESE CONFUSABLE ACTION VERBS BASED ON INTER-LANGUAGE CORPUS

Abstract

The verb, as the core component of a sentence, occupies a crucial position in Chinese language teaching. Action verbs, in particular, are numerous, and errors associated with their use are prominent, while related research is relatively scarce. This study, adopting an interlanguage perspective, conducts a comprehensive statistical analysis of the misuse of action verbs within a large-scale interlanguage corpus. By considering both the number of error instances and the relative confusion rate, we have identified 59 groups of high-frequency easily confused action verbs and conducted an in-depth analysis of the 1,399 confusion instances involving these verbs. Our findings reveal that, in terms of proficiency level distribution, these high-frequency easily confused verbs are generally at lower levels, primarily concentrated in the elementary stages (levels 1-3). Regarding the direction of misuse, unidirectional confusion accounts for more than 80% of the cases. Although the number of bidirectionally confused verb pairs is relatively small, the number of error instances and confusion rates are higher for these pairs. At the inter-lexical level, the confusion patterns are quite complex. In terms of semantic relationships, near-synonym confusion accounts for about one-third of the cases, semantically related but more distant pairs account for half, and pairs with little to no semantic relation make up approximately 15%. Furthermore, we analyzed the factors leading to lexical confusion from four aspects: target language characteristics, native language influence, supplementary teaching materials, and teaching issues. Finally, we proposed targeted improvement suggestions focused on teachers, textbooks and supplementary materials.