A Comparative Study of the Chinese Comparative Sentences “Bǐ”, “Yú” and Thai Comparative Sentences “Kwa”

Abstract

Chinese comparative sentences are one of the basic grammar points that foreign students have to master. Therefore, teaching materials at the beginning level, intermediate level and advanced level all include comparative sentences. The purpose of this article is to analyze three types of comparative sentences, and then find out their similarities and differences for better understanding in using Chinese and Thai comparative sentences. In this article, the author studies and compares two Chinese comparative structures, namely, “Bi” sentence, “Yu” sentence with Thai comparative sentence “Kwa” in three levels: syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The results reveal “Bi” structures are more than the other two, and the ways to use “Bi” are complicated. “Yu” structure is quite simple. Furthermore, there are many restrictions in using components in the “Yu” sentence. “Kwa” structure is also simple, but the components are more flexible than “Yu” sentence. As for differences of these three sentences, the cause is from basic meaning of these three words. Their basic meanings cause differeces in terms of syntactic structure and usage when used in comparative sentences.