A Questionnaire and Big Data-based Study on the Mixing up of Chinese Structural Particles

In Chinese, the three structural particles “De ”, “De ” and “De ”all share the same pronunciation of “de”, so it is difficult to distinguish them in spoken language, while in written language, the three of them are often mixed up, with “De ”often being overused to substitute “De ” and “De ”, In this research, we conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate how well college students can distinguish these three words and how they are used in actual scenarios, before exploring the mixing up of these three words in a large-scale natural corpus of texts. The results show that a majority of the respondents were taught the difference among these three structural particles and their respective usage. Also most of the respondents were inclined to accept the division of “De” usage in Chinese, tending to distinguish them consciously in reality. In the following big data analysis, a small proportion of misuse was found, which means people do pay attention to this linguistic phenomenon. This study provides support for distinguishing Chinese structural particles “De ”, “De ” and “De ” in written language.