This thesis is devoted to the research of the main systemic and structural features of Chinese pedagogical discourse (CPD) lexis. This thesis focuses specifically on the analysis of four Chinese elementary textbooks lexis: «Practical Chinese Reader» 《新实用汉语课
本》, «Developing Chinese. Comprehensive course. Beginner level» 《发展汉语初级综 合》, «Boya Chinese. Elementary» 《博雅汉语初级》, «Chinese course» 《汉语教程》.
For the first time in Ukrainian Chinese studies, the methods, and principles of creating a linguistic annotated corpus of CPD were outlined to provide multifunctional recourse for studying morphology, semantics, and other aspects of discourse. CPD can be used to solve various linguistic tasks: automatic search and analysis of collocations, identifying systematic relationships between linguistic units, grouping selected words into clusters, etc. The actual length of CPD corpus is 74 640 words. The created concordance demonstrates the contexts of use of all lexemes in the text. The frequency dictionary of CPD were compiled. This thesis aims to parameterize the vocabulary of CPD. A complete inventory and paradigmatic lexical relationships study of CPD lexis was conducted. In order to identify quantitative database, the corpus has been constructed based on the words in the textbooks. The fundamental parameters of the statistical structure of CPD were identified and described at the lexical, morphological, and supraphrase levels.
A comprehensive analysis of system-structural organization of CPD vocabulary was also performed, and the following results were obtained: 74% of the vocabulary is connected by intralexeme connections, 68.5% of its units are connected by interlexeme connections – hyper-hyponymy – 10% of its total amount, synonymy – 23.5%, antonymy – 35%. The lexical composition of CPD is made of semantic groupings of different nature and size depending on the part-language affiliation.
Based on frequency dictionary the frequency zones of the dictionary were also obtained. The most frequent vocabulary is divided into two zones: the vocabulary with the upper high frequency (rank 1-7) is seven words that occupy 17.63% of the text of the corpus and are represented by two auxiliary words 的 (3036), 了 (2211), two pronouns 我 я (2624), 你 you (1233), one
verb 是 to be (1507), one adverb 不 not (1304), one numeral 一 one (1244). The KPD
vocabulary with the lower high frequency is 105 words (rank 8-112, frequency 743-100), occupies 36.19% of the text. Among independent parts of speech, nouns with a specific meaning and anthroponyms, verbs with the most general meaning, verbs of speech and thinking prevail. Vocabulary with an average frequency (rank 113-945, frequency 99-10) occupies 30.55% of the text and does not significantly differ in composition from vocabulary with a lower average frequency (rank 946-3312, frequency 9-2) - these are toponyms, common names people, etc., verbs of social activity and change.
All the results of the conducted research can be used in Chinese language teaching. The results of the study can also become the basis for further development of СPD with a pragmatic goal (compilation of new educational materials oriented to the needs of Ukrainian students). This work has proved that there is great variation in the number and selection of words across the books indicating that there does not seem to be a common thought behind word selection in textbooks used to teach Chinese as a foreign language. The present findings have important implications for future textbook development and may be used for writing Chinese textbook for Ukrainian students. Future studies on the current topic are therefore required to establish a frequency dictionary and a quantitative proficiency guideline for material development.
