Silvia M. Chu
What are the major typological features in Chinese?
Chinese is considered monosyllabic. Most of the time the morphemes are single syllables. The
monosyllabic morphemes that can exist on their own, they are called free morphemes. For
example, 电话 [diànhuà]. Both characters can exist individually or joined with another character.
It is also characterized as a tonal language. Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish
lexical or grammatical meaning. In Chinese, tones are distinctive by their contour, with each tone
having a different internal pattern of rising and falling pitch. For example: mā, má, mǎ, and mà.
Each of them has a different tone; each of them carries a different meaning.
An isolating language is characterized by low morpheme per word ratio. A related concept is the
analytic language, a grammatical construction that uses unbound morphemes (separated words
and/or word order). Both characteristics are part of Chinese typology. For example, 狗吃人 and
人吃狗. Both use the same characters but a simple change of word order conveys a
different meaning.
The number marker is another feature. In most languages, it is obligatory to make a distinction
between singular and plural while there is no necessity of the category of numbers. In Chinese,
there is no plural or singular for an item. For example 笔 ［pǐ］can be used as singular or plural.
It would need to be expressed by a separate word such as 三支笔 ［sān zhī bǐ］ in order to
know if it is plural or singular.
Chinese is one of the languages that follow the SVO (subject verb object) pattern. Standard
Mandarin is SVO but sentences with clear context; word order is flexible to allow SOV. Chinese
itself is an SVO order at sentence level. In Chinese, the modified element always follows the
modifier, no matter what kind of modifier it is and how long the modifier is. In Chinese the
Silvia M. Chu
adverbs and adverbials, which are the modifiers for verbs and verb phrases, occur before verbs
and verb phrases. For example: 我昨天在家开心的做饭［wǒ zuótiān zài jiā kaīxin de zuòfàn].
Give two examples to elaborate on errors American students make with Chinese vowels.
English has more vowel sounds than Chinese language vowels. They maybe similar to English
ones but they are not identical. Moreover, pronunciation in Chinese means that same vowel
might sound different. Unlike the trapezoidal English vowel diagram, the Chinese vowel diagram
is triangular.
Americans tend to pronounce the “e” fixed in the middle. The reason for this is because there is
no such pronunciation in English vocabulary. They have difficulties pronouncing the 饿 [è]. It is
a diphthong consisting of first of a back, unrounded semivowel (which can be formed by first
pronouncing "w" and then spreading the lips without changing the position of the tongue)
followed by similar to “duh” sound. Another difficulty encountered within American students is
the “yu” [ü] sound. The most similar pronunciation might be “you”. They tend to pronounce it
too high or too low. The trick to the “yu” is for a small “o” with the lips by pronouncing the “i”
while forming the ‘o’ with the lips without the ‘u’ sound.
English vowels have contrasts of being loose and tight, giving it a different meaning when
pronounced. For example: sheep and ship. However, in Chinese it does not have such feature
length of vowels. Much of the phonetic errors made by American students are because in their
native language there is no such sound and they are trying to pronounce it based on their
knowledge of their native language.