Cross-linguistic Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and Thai Classifier Systems: Pedagogical Implications for Teaching Chinese Classifiers to Thai Learners

Abstract

As international Chinese language education continues to expand in Thailand, research on the teaching of Chinese classifiers to Thai learners has gradually garnered attention. However, Comparative studies on the Chinese-Thai classifier system for guiding Chinese and Thai classifier instruction remain to be further expanded and enriched.Based on this current situation, this paper focuses on a review of comparative studies on Chinese and Thai classifiers and their pedagogical implications for teaching Chinese to Thai learners. It comprehensively traces the development of research on the "concept of classifiers" both domestically and internationally, and delves into an analysis of research findings on the classification, semantic functions, grammatical functions, and pragmatic strategies of classifiers in Chinese and Thai. Through comparison, it is found that Chinese and Thai classifiers share commonalities in expressing quantitative concepts, certain semantic categories, and basic syntactic structures. However, they exhibit significant differences in classification systems, semantic granularity, flexibility in syntactic collocation, and pragmatic cultural connotations. Current research faces issues such as insufficiently in-depth theoretical exploration of Thai classifiers, incomplete comparative analyses between Chinese and Thai, and a lack of targeted strategies for second language teaching. To address these gaps, this paper proposes strategies including cultivating a composite teaching team, constructing a specialized corpus platform, implementing context-based tiered teaching, and developing localized intelligent teaching systems. These strategies aim to compensate for the current research deficiencies and promote the scientific and precise development of teaching Chinese classifiers to Thai learners.