AN ANALYSIS ON THE CONFUSION OF VIETNAMESE STUDENTS’ CHINESE VERBS “帮”, “帮忙”, “帮助”

Abstract

The three verbs “帮”, “帮忙” and “帮助” have quite similar lexical meanings, but there are differences in syntax and semantics. Based on the Vietnamese students’ Chinese inter-language corpus, this paper has analyzed the confusion of these verbs. The results of the study show that the confusion percentages of these three verbs are in descending order of 帮忙 > 帮 > 帮助. Among them, the confusion relationship between “帮” and “帮忙” is two-way confusion, the confusion relationship between “帮” and “帮助” is also two-way confusion, and the confusion relationship between “帮忙” and “帮助” is also one-way confusion. Students appear confused because they do not clearly understand the difference between these verbs in terms of syntax and semantics. In addition, negative language transfer also has a certain impact on students’ errors.