A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EQUATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH “GĒN” IN CHINESE AND LINGALA

Abstract

This study conducts a comparative analysis of the Chinese “gēn” marked equative construction and its corresponding structures in Lingala, focusing on word order, syntactic structure, grammatical markers, and semantic functions. The aim is to identify both universal patterns and language-specific phenomena, to summarize the similarities and differences in how the two languages express equative constructions, and to generalize their respective grammatical characteristics. The finding indicates that although both languages employ syntactic strategies to construct equative sentences, they exhibit significant differences at the surface-structural level. In Chinese, the comparative standard is introduced by prepositions such “gēn”, “yǔ”, “hé”and “tóng”, whereas Lingala exclusively employs the preposition “na” for this function. When adjectives, psychological verbs, or certain verb phrases occur in the sentence, Chinese requires these elements to appear after the degree marker “yíyàng” (the same); by contrast, Lingala places such elements before the degree marker “lolenge moko” (the same). with regard to negation, Chinese allows two patterns: the negative marker “bù” may precede the degree marker “yíyàng”, or it may precede the comparative marker to form a “bù gēn” construction. In Lingala, however, the negative marker “te” can only appear after the degree marker, yielding the structure “lolenge moko te”. Overall, this study provides pedagogical implications for the teaching of Chinese as a second or foreign language, particularly with respect to the instruction of “gēn” marked equative constructions.