Structural Analysis of Mandarin Chinese (MC) and Yoruba Simple Sentences

Abstract

This study is necessitated because of the teaming number of Yoruba learners of Chinese as a second language (L2). MC (Putonghua) is the official dialect of the Chinese language taught in Confucius Institutes around the world. This is equally the variety that Yoruba learners are exposed to here in Nigeria. The framework of contrastive analysis is used for the study. Data were sourced from native speakers and relevant literature. Findings show that to large extent, both languages exhibit an SVO pattern in affirmative sentences and their imperative sentences also show similar pattern, hence minimal structural variations. However, Negation processes in both languages differ, Yoruba negative particles occur at sentence initial positions where as in Chinese they precede the Verb. Interrogation in MC is marked with in-situ question markers or others question particles that can occur at sentence final position whereas Yoruba question particles occur at the sentence initial position. Conclusively understanding these structural patterns of MC becomes pertinent in order to help Yoruba L2 learners understand areas of similarity and differences so as to boost their learning speed and enhance their use of both languages especially for teachers, curriculum planners, translators and other learners in general.