A STUDY ON THE USAGE OF CHINESE DUMMY VERBS BY VIETNAMESE STUDENTS

Abstract

Dummy verbs are a special subclass of modern Chinese verbs with five members, namely 加以, 给以, 予以, 给予, 进行. The results of the analysis of Vietnamese students’ Chinese interlanguage corpus by the method of Error Analysis show that Vietnamese students have started to use the verb 进行 from the primary stage, then mainly the verbs 给予, 予以, 加以 in the advanced stage, but not yet the verb 给以. Errors only appear when using the verb 进行. The main reason for the errors is the negative transfer from the native language. There are two types of errors: the verb 进行 is confused with other verbs and the verb 进行 is redundantly used. Students have no improvement in using this verb despite their improved Chinese language proficiency. Comparison with native Chinese speakers by the method of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis shows that Vietnamese students use fewer dummy verbs than the native. It can be seen that dummy verbs are difficult language points for Vietnamese students to acquire.