Second language acquisition of Chinese grammatical morphemes : a processability perspective
Date
2001
Authors
Zhang, Yanyin
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This study investigates the second language acquisition of eight Chinese grammatical morphemes by three English-speaking learners. Adopting the theoretical framework and analytical methods of Processability Theory, the study focuses on the developmental sequence of the morphemes, their points of emergence and their subsequent refinement. The influence of formal instruction is examined as a variable, and the predictive power of the processing hierarchy of the interlanguage morphology proposed in Processability Theory (Pienemann 1999) is tested. The study employed a longitudinal design. Three Australian university students enrolled in a first year intensive Chinese course participated as informants. They were all native speakers of English and had no prior knowledge of Chinese. Their interlanguage speech data was collected regularly through task-based oral interviews over a period of one academic year. A total of nine interviews were conducted with two subjects, and eight interviews with one subject. Data was then transcribed and grammatical features tagged. Data analysis was performed through distributional analysis which detailed the linguistic environment of each grammatical morpheme so that the precise way in which the form entered the interlanguage could be determined. Emergence criteria stipulated in Processability Theory were then applied to locate the acquisition point of the form. The subsequent unfolding refinement of the form was examined in terms of the expansion of its semantic, functional and linguistic contexts. The results showed that the overall morphological progression in the interlanguage of the subjects was compatible with the processing hierarchy hypothesized in Processability Theory. The morphemes emerged according to the prescribed stages. Developmental gaps occurred within a stage, but never across a stage. The overall grammatical sequencing of the syllabus was also compatible with the processing sequence. However, the learners did not respond to instruction in a neat manner and there were considerable variations both within the acquisition pattern of individual learners and among the learners. Many of these variations would defy explanation on the basis of instruction. The only clear evidence of the role of instruction was that it always preceded each emergence point. The research also showed that the developmental process of the morphemes was associated with the semantic and grammatical analysis of the lexical items in the second language, the categorial analysis by the learners of lexical items which cross-categorize, the form-functional complexities of the morpheme, the production strategies of the learners and their learning orientations.
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