Chinese Interference in Learning English VerbsMother tongue interference is defined as the use of elements from ones native language while learning a second one. Instances of Chinese interference in English learning can be found at the level of pronunciation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary and meaning. English and Chinese verbs, although similar in many aspects, have some subtle but significant differences in semantic composition, bringing difficulties to Chinese students in learning English verbs. 1. The semantic composition of verbs According to Websters New World Dictionary, a verb is a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being.”. From this definition we can see that the semantic function of a verb is to describe a motion, may it be an act, occurrence, or mode of being. However, motion itself cannot make up a motion event. There are other elements associated with motion such as direction (as in take and bring), manner (as in prance”), aspect (as in “restart”) and so on. All these associative elements, together with motion, constitute a motion complex. Semantic elements are realized by linguistic structures of various forms. A motion complex is expressed by what we call a verb complex, which comprises the head verb, the particle and the reflection. Since reflection is more concerned with grammar, we will limit ourselves to a consideration of the first two. Therefore, here we have two sets, as are illustrated in the following: Set A (motion complex) Set B (verb complex) motion head verb manner particle direction cause result . Noticeably, these two sets, that is, the semantic composition and its linguistic form, are seldom in one-to-one correspondence. In some cases a motion complex is realized by a single head verb, which is termed incorporation. e.g. He cupped his hands and I poured some water into them. Cup means to form (esp. the hands) into the shape of a cup, which depicts both motion and manner. However, sometimes a single verb is incapable of depicting a motion complex, in which case particles are used in conjunction with the head verb, indicating direction, manner, aspect, and so on. e.g. I ran in. Many direction verbs in Chinese like 上去, 下来 are cases in point. In the following sections we will discuss how the head verb functions in fulfilling incorporation and how the particle plays an important part in the verb complex. 2. A comparison of incorporation between English and Chinese head verbs 2.1 Incorporation is abundant in language. Lets see some examples from English and Chinese: English verb Chinese equivalent Meaning (interpretation) to saw 锯 to cut with a saw 用锯子切割 to target to aim at a target 把.作为目标 to trudge to walk with heavy steps 步履沉重地走 to clutter to make untidy or confused, esp. by filling with useless or unwanted things 乱七八糟地堆 After a brief comparison we can say that incorporation is quite common with English verbs, whereas in many cases the exact Chinese equivalents to these incorporate verbs cannot be found. To encode the meaning, Chinese relies on other sentence elements like adverbial and complement in the above examples. Now we have arrived at a major difference between English and Chinese verbs, that is, the English is rich in incorporate verbs which allow a greater semantic specificity and thus a vivid description of the motion complex, whereas in Chinese incorporation is not so common. Instead, it is often the case that to portray a motion complex, the associative elements are separately coded by other sentence elements. This conclusion could be illustrated as following: Subject sentence elements object other than the verb complement adverbial English . sentence motion the incorporate verb direction associative elements manner result sentence elements subject other than the verb object . Chinese sentence elements adverbial direction Sentence that realize the complement (to indicate) manner associative elements particle result in a motion complex the general verb motion This also explains the claim that English vocabularies, relatively speaking, are semantically opaque, whereas Chinese ones have a greater degree of transparency. (It is important to note that transparency is the end-point of a continuum of degrees of opacity, much as cleanness is the end-point of degrees of dirtiness.) 2.2 To get a comprehensive understanding of incorporation of English verbs and their equivalent Chinese expressions, a careful examination is in order. Here we classify incorporation into several types: A. incorporation from N-V Conversion William Morris and Marry Morris pointed out in their Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1975):The conversion of nouns to verbs is a form of linguistic change as old as the language itself. Since 1980s, N-V Co