An Empirical Study of the Effect of "Saliency" and "Competition" on Zero Anaphora in L2 Chinese Spoken Language

Based on the Accessibility Theory, this study explores how "saliency" and "competition" influence the production of zero anaphora in Chinese L2 oral discourse, with a focus on understanding these effects through the concept of language transfer. The results indicate that both intermediate and advanced learners tend to produce zero anaphora in contexts with high saliency and low competition. However, advanced learners demonstrate a greater ability to utilize zero anaphora even in context with lower saliency and higher competition compared to intermediate learners. This difference occurs because intermediate learners are impacted by negative transfer from their native language of English. With the improvement of Chinese proficiency, errors in zero anaphora are reduced due to the decrease in native language transfer, bringing their interlanguage use closer to that of native Chinese speakers. Furthermore, when considering the "distance" factor in Accessibility Theory (Tian & Zhao, 2022), the interplay of different accessibility factors was discovered, revealing the complexity and cognitive universality of accessibility.