Acquisition of English Tough Construction by Chinese Learners of English as Second Language

摘要

English Tough Construction is one of the most difficult and delayed sentence structures in English in both first language acquisition and second language acquisition. It is reported that even advanced learners did not reach the ultimate attainment, while in Chinese a similar structure also can be found, which might well be a facilitator or impeller in second language acquisition. The present study investigates how Chinese learners of English acquire English Tough Construction. After viewing the literature of English Tough Construction and its acquisition, including Chomsky's Whmovement theory, Reider's NP-movement account of English TC and Huang Churen's theory on lexical nature of Chinese Tough Construction, An operational definition was put forward of Chinese Nan/Yi Construction and thought that Chinese similar structure involves a syntactic as well as a lexical reading, in light of which, the research questions to be addressed in this study are: (1) Can the L2 acquisition of English TC by Chinese speakers be accounted for by semantic transparency outlined by Yamaoka? (2) What role does L1 transfer play in the acquisition? (3) What role does proficiency play in the acquisition? To answer the three research questions, two possible factors are identified: animacy and L1 transfer which can be manifested by the semantic role hierarchy and role of proficiency. Inspired by Schwartz&Sprouse's Full Transfer/Full Access theory, the first hypothesis and its empirical manifestation was put forward: the interlanguage of beginner level Chinese learners of English will show a semantic role hierarchy which is more similar to that of their mother tongue Chinese; the interlanguage representation of ETC will show a more target-like semantic role hierarchy in keeping up with proficiency. Chinese speakers will represent lexicalized ETC as derivational adjectives rather than ETC in interlanguage. Modelled on Yamaoka's semantic transparency of ETC and Zhang's Semantic Salience Hierarchy Model with animacy, we propose the second hypothesis: the learner will perform better with inanimate nouns as subject than animate nouns in the acquisition. To testify the hypotheses mentioned above, a research experiment was designed to collect information on the L2 acquisition of English TC. The result shows that the advanced learners do not reach the ultimate attainment yet. The semantic role hierarchy of beginner level is similar to that of their native language. Most of learners prefer to represent the lexicalized TC as adjectives. Animacy plays a significant role in the process of acquisition of TC. A natural order of semantic role is found: nanimate patient>inanimate locative>inanimate instrument>inanimate manner. It is also found that a U-shaped behavior is manifested concerning the role of proficiency.