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A Corpus-based Analysis of Errors in Parts of Speech in Chinese Learner English

A Corpus-based Analysis of Errors in Parts of Speech in Chinese Learner English. by Zhao xincheng Huaqiao University Fujian, PRC. I. Introduction. 1. Definition

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A Corpus-based Analysis of Errors in Parts of Speech in Chinese Learner English

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  1. A Corpus-based Analysis of Errors in Parts of Speech in Chinese Learner English by Zhao xincheng Huaqiao University Fujian, PRC

  2. I. Introduction 1. Definition Errors in parts of speech (POS), defined as the misuse of parts of speech but with meanings of words or utterances sufficiently conveyed (Yang, 2005), are among the most frequently committed errors in the use of words found in compositions by Chinese learners of English, accounting for 4.18% of the 21 different types of errors with frequencies exceeding 1% in the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) (Gui & Yang, 2003).

  3. 2. Objectives 1) patterns of errors in POS by Chinese learners of English at elementary and advanced levels 2) possible correlation between error patterns and learner proficiency levels 3) possible causes of errors in POS 4) implications for vocabulary teaching and learning

  4. II. Subjects and Methods • Subjects ST2 and ST6 were chosen from the CLEC, representing learners of English at elementary and advanced levels respectively. The reason why these two samples were chosen is that they are learners’ written productions under non-examination conditions, supposedly free from time constraints, anxiety, and avoidance, as language production under test conditions is more liable to deviations from the norms. Moreover, ST2 and ST6 can be regarded as the two poles on the continuum of Chinese English learners with homogeneous social and cultural background under formal instructional settings, thus a comparison can be more justifiably made between them to investigate similarities in their production errors, and probable correlations between proficiency levels and types of errors.

  5. 2. Tools and method Learner errors are classified into 61 categories in the CLEC. First, errors in POS (coded wd2) were collected from ST2 and ST6 branch corpuses using ConcApp, and their frequencies were tallied. Next, the errors were further classified into subcategories and labeled accordingly. See table 1.

  6. Errors in POS were further classified into 15 subcategories, as shown in table 1. Type 1 to 14 can be defined with certainty, but type 15 includes errors that are not specifiable for the following reasons 1) it is difficult to identify the writer’s intention because of the gravity of the errors, especially in ST2; 2) errors with a frequency of less than 2, which is statistically insignificant; 3) errors that are difficult to identify in CLEC.

  7. III. Main Findings 1. Frequency patterns of errors in POS 1）The 4 most frequent types of POS errors made by ST2 and ST6 are: adjAn > nAadj > vAn > nAv；and ST2 and ST6 demonstrated similar tendency in these 4 types of POS errors in the use of lexical words; 2）ST2 committed more errors than ST6 in the following categories: Winf > prepAv > others 3）ST6 made more errors than ST2 in the following categories: adjAn > nAadj > vAn > nAv > Vform > coinW 4) ST2 and ST6 had similar frequencies of errors in adjAadv and advAadj.

  8. Chart 1: Patterns of POS errors by ST2 and ST6

  9. 2. Distribution of errors in POS As table 1 and Chart 1 indicate, overwhelming majority of the errors in POS are related with lexical words, amounting to 343 by ST2 (83.3%), and 293 by ST6 (95%). The most frequent errors are adjAn, followed by nAadj, nAv, vAn, adjAadv, advAadj. Other types of errors are much less frequent, and there is a noticeable difference between ST2 and St6, too.

  10. Chart 2: distribution of POS errors by ST2 & ST6

  11. Chart 2 shows that the percentages of errors in the use of lexical words by ST2 and ST6 are close to each other, while the use of prepositions as verbs and wrong pronouns only occurred in ST2, and errors in verb forms only occurred in ST6, who also used coined words three times as much as ST2.

  12. 3. Some tentative conclusions (1) Errors in POS do not reflect learners proficiency levels; whatever their level is, they commit frequent POS errors in the use of lexical words which might be an indication of L1 transfer. This supports Sun Zhimian (2001), who collected tons of typical errors made by Chinese learners of English during a decade of his English teaching career, all of which can be traced to Chinese L1 thinking patterns and linguistic habits.

  13. (2) there are some observable differences between some types of POS errors, which might be developmental errors, caused by learners’ incomplete or incorrect use of L2 rules, the use of learning or communicative strategies( the more frequent errors in Vform, coined words by ST6), or induced errors due to lack of attention to constraints on the use of linguistic rules (overgeneralization).

  14. IV. Discussion 1. Transfer of Chinese word class features into learners’ interlangauge Why is it that ST2 and ST6, the two poles on the proficiency continuum, demonstrate similar patterns of errors in lexical words? For Chinese learners of English, parts of speech are treated as basic grammatical concepts . Classroom observations suggest that Chinese learners of English, especially high proficiency learners, have a strong meta-linguistic awareness of word classes and their respective syntactic roles.

  15. According to empirical studies by Liu (2006:131) word class is that part of the word knowledge which is acquired early, and “ invariably the best demonstrated type of word knowledge” on Chinese learners’ English L2 development route, either receptively or productively. All factors considered, the only possible cause of their errors in POS in lexical words is transfer of word class features in L1 Chinese. A comparison between English and Chinese word classes may shed light on Chinese L1 transfer in the domain of word class in English.

  16. 2. Linguistic markedness, English and Chinese word classes (1) Definition According to Larsen-Freeman and Long (2000:101), linguistic markedness is usually defined in terms of complexity, relative infrequency of use or departure from something that is more basic, typical in a language. It is generally accepted in markedness theory that linguistically unmarked features of L1 will tend to transfer, but linguistically marked features will not. The relation between linguistic markedness and transfer can be summarized by the following table.

  17. Table 2: Markedness and transfer (Ellis, 1994)

  18. (2) the differences between English and Chinese word classes in terms of linguistic markedness (a) most lexical words in English have overt forms (deviational suffix) from which their parts of speech can be inferred. For example, in the following list of words taken from CLEC where errors occurred, the parts of speech can be identified from the suffixes of the words: Happy / happiness, sleep / sleepy, pollute / pollution, performance / perform, encourage/ encouragement, hibernate/hibernation, minimize / minimum, emphasize / emphasis, success/ succeed /successful, death / die, jealous/jealousy, health / healthy, offend/ offence / offensive, differ /different / difference, ornamental / ornament, help / helpful, tradition / traditional, society / social, etc.

  19. Take the following sentence as another example. Statements (noun、plural) about crime are （plural） not criminal（adjective）language（noun、singular）; nor are （plural） statements（noun、plural） about emotions（plural） necessarily（adverbs） emotional（adjective）language（noun、singular） In the above sentence, the italicized words all have word class markings. Even if one does not understand the sentence as a whole, he can at least identify the parts of speech of the words with the help of their deviational endings.

  20. (b) In contrast Chinese does not have overt formal indication of word classes. According to Otto Yespersen: most words in Chinese have no deviations or inflections to mark word class (quoted in Wu & Wang, 1994) and the parts of speech of words can only be drawn by their syntactic functions (that may account for the fact that in Chinese dictionaries there are no parts of speech information). According to Liu (1992:7): Covertness is a basic characteristics in the Chinese language. By covertness it is meant that words or utterances do not have formal indications of their grammatical roles. Look at the following example:

  21. 红旗漫卷西风。 她的脸上红一阵白一阵的。 他俩从来没有红过脸。 东方红，太阳升。 落红不是无情物，化作春泥更护花 。 In the above examples, the underlined character “红”for red is used as an adjective, a verb, and a noun in different sentences.

  22. (3) In terms of learning difficulties from a psychological viewpoint, Eckman’s Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) can best explain errors in POS by Chinese learners of English. The MDH makes three predictions (Eckman 1977, quoted in Larsen-Freeman & Long, 2000:102) about where errors might occur in terms of linguistic markedness:

  23. Those areas of the L2 which differ from the L1, and more marked than the L1 will be difficult. The relative degree of difficulty of the areas of the L2 which are more marked than the L1 will correspond to the relative degree of markedness. Those areas of the L2 which are different from the L1, but are not more marked than the L1, will not be difficult. According to James (2001:183), the MDH offers a better explanation about the relation between markedness and L1 transfer.

  24. 3. Conditions of Chinese L1 transfer in word class in CLEC While discussing lexical transfer, Odlin (1989:79) made the observations that (1) Lexical transfer can occur when there is no morphological similarity between words that appear to be semantically equivalent; (2) Transfer can also occur when the word forms are not similar but the meanings are. Our findings from the CLEC show that most POS errors caused by L1 word class features occur to words which have similar meanings in both Chinese and English.

  25. Look at the following : Lines (1) to (4) are from ST2. (1) gh[wd2,4-0]. Fail [wd2, 0-1][vAn] is succeed’s [wd2,0-1] (2) ause it relations [wd2,2-4] [nAv] people’s healthy [wd2,6- (3) eyes. For our safe [wd2,3-], [adjAn] people don’t play the fi (4) nd black face likes [wd2, s-] [prepAv] my father’s very much. Esp

  26. Lines (5) to (10) are from ST6. (5) to make a complain [wd2, 1-] [vAn] on the noise that disturb (6) you see a terminal [wd2, 1-] [adjAadv] ill person who sream [fm (7) ct. to our exciting [wd2, 1-1] [adjAn] the government is now und (8) feminists emphasis [wd2, s-] [nAv] those too much. They think (9) Since the industry [wd2, 2-1] [nAadj] revolution, in order to m (10) n help people broad [wd2, s-] [adjAn] their minds. Television ca

  27. V. Conclusions 1. Patterns of POS errors (1) A great majority of errors in parts of speech in Chinese learner English occur with lexical words. (2) Advanced learners may commit more errors in lexical words than learners at elementary levels, because they have to deal with more demanding writing tasks that require the use of a wider range of vocabulary. (3) Elementary learners commit more errors in functional words than advanced learners, because these errors are more of a developmental nature.

  28. 2. Relation between POS error types and learners’ proficiency levels The frequency of errors in parts of speech does not reflect learners’ proficiency levels. It doesn’t follow that advanced learners commit less errors in parts of speech in lexical words. Actually they may committed more errors in lexical words because their written tasks were more demanding, requiring that they make more attempts at expressing their ideas, so they may be more willing to take risks at words in which they have less confidence , and they may also have coined words resulting from their incorrect use or overgeneralization of deviational forms. Advanced learners commit less errors in functional words because these words are limited in number, so as learners’ proficiency increases, their chances of making mistakes decreases naturally.

  29. 3. Causes of errors in parts of speech (1) Errors in lexical words are mainly caused by transfer of Chinese word class features. (2) Errors in functional words are likely to be developmental in nature. They are part of the learning process. As learners progress along their way to a mastery of target language, they make less and less parts of speech errors with functional words.

  30. 4. Implications for vocabulary teaching in the classroom (1) More attention should be paid to the teaching of lexical words at all stages of learning because they are larger in number, and an indicator of learner proficiency. (2) More systematic C-E contrastive studies should be made in the classroom to raise learners’ awareness of the differences between forms of word classes in the two languages. (3) Vocabulary should always be a priority on our teaching agenda regardless of learners’ levels, but with different foci at different stages. (4) The use of CLEC should be introduced in the classroom so that the teaching of vocabulary can be more targeted at words which are more troublesome to Chinese learners of English.

  31. References [1] Ellis, R. 1994. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press. [2] Gui, Shichun. & Yang, Huizhong. 2002. Chinese English Learner Corpus [M]. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press. [3] Gui, Shichun. 2004. A Cognitive Model of Corpus-based Analysis of Chinese Learners’ Errors of English [J]. Modern Foreign Languages, vol.27 N0.2. [4] Gao , Yuan. 2001. Introductory remarks [A]. In James, C. Errors in Language Learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis [M], F30. [5] James, C. 2001. Errors in Language Learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press. [6] Lott, D. 1983. Analyzing and counteracting interference errors. English Language Teaching Journal 37:256-61. [7] Larsen Freeman, D & Long M.H. (2000). An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research [M]. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press. [8] Liu, Shaolong. 2006. Researching L2 Word Knowledge Development [M]. Science Press. [9] Liu, Miqing. 1992. C-E and E-C Contrastive Studies. Jiang Xi Education Press.

  32. [10] Odlin, T. 1989. Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press, 2001. [11] Ren, Xueliang. 1981. A Chinese-English Comparative Grammar. China Social Sciences Press. [12] Sun, Zhimian. 2001. Chinese Environment and English Learning [M]. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press. [13] Wu, Jingrong & Wang, Jianzhi. 1994. On parts of speech in English and Chinese [A]. In Li R. Collection of Essays on English and Chinese Comparative Studies [C]. Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.

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