From a simple to a complex aspectual system: Feature reassembly in L2 acquisition of Chinese imperfective markers by English speakers

被引:5
|
作者
Guo, Yanyu [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Cambridge, Cambridge, England
关键词
Chinese; English; feature reassembly; imperfective aspect; L1; effects; CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS; LEARNERS; 2ND-LANGUAGE; MARKING; VERBS;
D O I
10.1177/0267658320911433
中图分类号
G40 [教育学];
学科分类号
040101 ; 120403 ;
摘要
This article reports on an empirical study on the acquisition of Chinese imperfective markers (zai, -zhe(P) and -zhe(R)) by English-speaking learners at three proficiency levels. Compared to English, Chinese has a richer imperfective aspect in terms of markers (forms) and features (meanings). Results are presented from a grammaticality judgment task, a sentence-picture matching task and a sentence completeness judgment task. We find that advanced learners are successful in reassembling additional semantic features (e.g. the [+durative] feature of zai and the [+atelic] feature of -zhe(P)) when the first language (L1) and second language (L2) functional categories to which the to-be-added features belong are the same. However, advanced learners have problems in differentiating between the interpretations of the progressive zai and the resultant-stative -zhe(R), and are not sensitive to the incompleteness effect of -zhe(P), which indicates that discarding L1-transferred features is arduous for learners. Our findings, in general, support the predictions of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). In addition, there is some evidence obtained for L1 influence, which persists at an advanced stage.
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页码:89 / 116
页数:28
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