This paper discusses the semantic differences of four "cut" verbs in Chinese jian, qie, xiu, ge and their English counterparts cut (with scissors), slice/cut, trim/prime (away/off) and cut (off/out) and challenges that young bilingual children may encounter in word learning. The fine differences of the verbs were first identified with references to usage notes in dictionaries and thesaurus and then represented with an approach for lexical differentiation adopted from DiMarco et al., (1992). The nuances and subtleties of the denotation and connotation of the "cut" verbs were illustrated accordingly for the understanding of bilingual word learning by young children.
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