Acquiring the polysemous adverb HAI in Chinese by English-speaking, Japanese-speaking, and Korean-speaking CSL learners

Using corpus analysis and error analysis, this study investigates English-speaking, Japanese-speaking, and Korean-speaking Chinese learners' acquisition of various meanings of hai in Mandarin Chinese, including its temporal meaning 'still, yet' as well as its abundant atemporal meanings involving addition, comparison and counter-expectation. We found a preponderance of misselection errors across the three groups of learners. The next most common error type for the Japanese-speaking and Korean-speaking learners was omission, while omission and over-inclusion were equally challenging for the English-speaking learners. Further analysis of errors in misselection shows that many learners failed to distinguish the temporal hai from the atemporal haishi required in a concessive sentence for the counter-expectation meaning.