Chinese primarily follows the same subject-verb-object structure as English, but I am still learning the different ways in which words can be arranged. For example, in some cases, I can signify having completed an action by adding the word “le” after the verb (and sometimes the rest of the sentence), but I don’t know if this applies to all cases of the past tense. One of the other concepts I am coming to understand is the way characters are combined to create new words with complex senses. The words for “stairs” come from the characters for “building” and “ladder”, and a part of the character for ladder means “wood”, as it was used in early building structures. Tracking ideas like this might relate broadly to the “language”, “anthropology”, and “sociology” areas of Aitchison’s linguistics. As a beginner, I will probably focus mostly on applied linguistics, but I am also interested in literature, philosophy, and psychology, so I hope to consider and learn more about how Mandarin has evolved and how I can be more aware of how to use it not just technically, but also how it has been used to communicate across time. In our readings, Crystal describes Bloomfield’s approach of beginning with phonetics and “proceeding through phonology, morphology, and syntax, and concluding with semantics”, but also describes an “opposite approach” that begins with semantics and progresses to vocabulary, grammar, and phonetics. My starting plan actually began with phonetics but then moved on to semantics, vocabulary, and grammar – so far, I believe it has been helpful in providing an overview, but I hope to learn more in class and during my tutoring sessions about the structures “in the middle” of the two plans (phonology, morphology, etc). My new knowledge of language structures will continue to inform me about the ways language is used in society and develops over time, and I believe it will both accelerate and deepen my learning.
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