L2 Chinese acquisition of ZaiP by native English speakers

The present study investigated L2 Chinese acquisition of the syntactic and semantic constraints on the locative ZaiP by native English speakers, using an acceptability judgment test and a sentence production test. Fifty-two L2 learners at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels participated in the study. The results suggested that, compared with postverbal ZaiP, L2 learners performed more accurately on preverbal ZaiP and that preverbal ZaiP was also acquired earlier. However, evident development was found neither in haplology of zai when ZaiP and the progressive zai co-occur in one sentence, nor in the position of the perfective le in relation to ZaiP. The results also indicated that L2 learners had difficulty acquiring the syntax-semantics interface involved in ZaiP. The findings were interpreted in terms of superset-subset relations between Chinese and English with regard to the position of locative PPs, the frequency effect, the complex nature of the syntactic and semantic features, and L2 learners’ selective noticing.

本文通过可接受性判断测试和组句测试，考察母语为英语的汉语学习者对处所“在”短语的习得情况，主要关注“在”短语的三点句法语义制约条件：（1）“在”短语的句法位置；（2）“在”的同音删略；（3）完成体标记“了”与“在”和动词的相对位置。三组不同汉语水平的52名汉语学习者参加了测试。测试结果显示，学习者对动词前“在”短语的掌握程度优于动词后“在”短语，动词前“在”短语也比动词后“在“短语更早习得。结果还显示，在另外两项句法语义制约条件的习得上，汉语中介语并没有随学习者汉语水平的提高而发展。作者从英汉处所介词短语位置上形成的子集-超级关系、频率效应、句法-语义特征复杂性和选择性注意等方面对结果做了讨论与分析。