Acquisition of the Chinese resultative construction by English speakers

1. Acquisition of the Chinese resultative construction by English speakers ShuaiShao

2. Research Area • SLA • Acquisition of Chinese by English speakers • 他打碎了花瓶。 • tada sui le huaping. • he hit broken le vase

3. Aims & Justifications • Few research on the acquisition of Chinese resultatives • English-speaking students have difficulty in acquiring it • Translation problem

4. Aims/Justifications • Cheng & Huang (1994) • Four types of resultatives in Chinese: • Transitive • Ergative • Unergative • Causative

5. References • Chen, L. & Oller, J. W. (2008). The use of passives and alternatives in English by Chinese speakers. Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar, 385–416. • Cheng, L. L. & Huang, J. (1994). On the argument structure of resultative compounds. Interdisciplinary Studies on Language and Language Change, 185-221. • Park, K. & Lakshmanan, U. (2007). The L2 acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in English resultatives. Proceedings of the…Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. 508-519. • Tai, J. (2003). Cognitive relativism: Resultative construction in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 4(2), 301-316. • Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37(2), 275-296. 

6. Research Questions • 1. Is there a significant difference in performance between the four groups, the intermediate group, intermediate-high group, advanced group, and control group? • 2. Is there a significant difference in performance, within the four groups, between the four different resultative construction types: unergative, transitive, ergative and causative? • 3. How did learners’ L1 influence their acquisition?

7. SUBJECTS/SOURCES • 55 students in OU • 20 second year students---intermediate • 15 third year students—intermediate-high • 5 fourth year students---advanced • 15 native Chinese speakers---control

8. Materials/Instruments • 10 short video clips • 7 resultatives • 3 distracters • Grammaticality Judgment Test • 20 resultatives • 10 distracters • Provide both characters and pinyin • Designed based on intermediate level

9. Procedure • 1. Pilot Study to both Chinese and English speakers. • Instruments will be revised • 2. Participants describe the video clips orally • Audio-recorded • No time limit; as many sentences as possible • 3. Grammaticality judgment test • Write down whether they are sure or not

10. Type of Data • Qualitative Data • Alternative expressions • Error patterns • Most and least likely wrongly judged sentences • Quantitative Data • Number of grammatical and ungrammatical resultatives • Accuracy in judgment

11. Data Analysis • Qualitative Data Analysis • Transcribe • Label based on the four types • Compare substitute and error patterns with English resultatives • Quantitative Data Analysis • Frequency be counted and compared among different groups • Compare “scores” • ANOVA

12. Anticipated Problems/Limitations • Limited number of participants • Cohort effect • Instruments are limited by the intermediate level • Participants may not be representitive

13. Expected Findings • 1. Learners of Chinese use resultatives less frequently. But There might be no significant difference in grammaticality judgment test. • 2. Learners of Chinese will have less difficulty in acquiring the transitive type of resultatives, comparing to the other three. • 3. Advanced learners will use resultatives more native-like.