| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 華語文教學碩士學位學程 === 105 === The Chinese adverb "Cai" is a frequently used polysemy. There are several dramatically different semantic meanings of "Cai". Linguists offer different classifications and explanations. The semantic diversity of "Cai" makes it difficult to teach and learn. This article aims to understand the effect of "Cai" on Chinese learners’ learning efficacy. This paper analyzes the relevant researches, and then divides "Cai" into five categories according to Wofgan Klein's (1994) criteria: "Cai1" means "just" (as in, “I just ate”). " Cai 2" means "lower than the default value". A smaller number and to a lower degree. " Cai 3" means “higher than the default value”. A higher number and to a higher degree. " Cai 4" denotes the relationship between the preceding and following sentences. " Cai 5" denotes rejection and emphasis. Using this basis to explore the relevance of each semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. The research tool used in this study, a questionnaire, was designed according to the above five criteria. The questions are divided into three parts: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic to gauge the proficiency of Chinese learners. Research subjects are divided into two levels: intermediate or advanced. There are 25 subjects in the intermediate group, and 15 in the advanced group. Participants are all foreign students at a Chinese-learning school in Taiwan. The Chinese learners’ textbook "Practical Audio-Visual Chinese" was also analyzed to compare against the results from the questionnaire to understand the efficacies of Chinese learners.
The results show no significant difference in semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic scores between the intermediate group and the advanced group. In other words, Chinese learners are able to grasp the meaning of " Cai " as early as the intermediate level. Performance is also good in understanding its semantics. On the syntax front, most intermediate and advanced learners could not properly position " Cai 2" syntax to express when something is lower than the default value. In terms of pragmatics, both groups scored low in " Cai 4" and " Cai 5". The textbook analysis show that when the topic " Cai " appears sparsely in the book, or is presented differently from the book, the student’s grasp of the adverb will tend to be weak.
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