In an effort to examine the use aspect of three adversative conjunctions -- ‘但是(danshi)’, ‘可是(keshi)’ and ‘不過(buguo)’-- in colloquial Chinese of Korean learners, an attempt was made in this research to analyze the transcribed data (approximately 335,000 characters) of class recordings of a semester in one of Chinese universities.
As a result of the analysis, the Korean learners showed the following characteristics and problems in their use of the above conjunctions:
First, of the target Korean learners, approximately two thirds of them revealed a clear tendency that shows more than 90% of the concentrated use of ‘但是(danshi)’ or ‘可是(keshi)’. This biased tendency of using only ‘可是(keshi)’ for a semester or using only ‘但是(danshi)’ more than 90% of the times in their colloquial Chinese shows a considerable shortage in their awareness of the degree of the shift between the two conjunctions or a difference in style (a difference between literary Chinese and colloquial Chinese).
Not only that, this biased tendency represents an abuse of ‘但是(danshi)/可 是(keshi)’ by the Korean learners from about 20% to about 47%. The phenomenon of this abuse can be divided into 5 categories in the main depending on the intention of use. Of these, the first and the fourth categories were especially noteworthy in the problem of abuse.
Second, avoidance tendency was quite noticeable in the case of ‘不過(buguo)’ as the factor of abuse of ‘但是(danshi)/可是(keshi)’ caused by lack of understanding of the usage of ‘不過(buguo)’ and factor of avoidance operated in combination. The number of ‘不過(buguo)’ used by the target learners was only 4 times (about 1.2%) out of a total 324 times for the use of the three conjunctions in a semester. Even this number, 4 times, turned out to be the cases of abuse.