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Acquisition of Base‐Generated Topics by English‐Speaking Learners of Chinese
Author(s) -
Yuan Boping
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00455.x
Subject(s) - parsing , mandarin chinese , second language acquisition , base (topology) , linguistics , psychology , computer science , knowledge base , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics
This study investigated the acquisition of base‐generated topics in Mandarin Chinese by 102 British university students learning Chinese as a second language. Chinese differs from English in that in Chinese the topic can be base‐generated, whereas in English it has to go through the process of movement. The hypothesis was that it would not be difficult for English speakers to acquire the base‐generated topic in Chinese because in the acquisition of Chinese, English‐speaking learners are exposed to positive evidence of base‐generated topics. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed; the learners acquired the base‐generated topics quite late. The difficulty the learners had in acquiring the base‐generated topic in Chinese could be due to a combination of several factors. The learners at elementary, intermediate, and higher‐intermediate stages may have adopted an incorrect parsing strategy in processing sentences with base‐generated topics. This incorrect parsing strategy diminished the triggering effect of the positive evidence for CP projection, absent at the initial state of the L2 acquisition of Chinese. In addition, there is misleading evidence in the learners' input data in support of the learners' adoption of the incorrect parsing strategy, which further delays the acquisition of the base‐generated topic in Chinese.