英语母语者汉语双数量结构的习得

Abstract

Double Quantitative Construction is a commonly used construction in Chinese, which bears a linear structure of ‘Quantitative Phrase A+Verb+ Quantitative Phrase B’ as in ‘十个人吃了一锅饭’ (‘Ten people ate a pot of food’). Three types of Quantitative Phrase can be used in the construction, including those for people and objects like ‘一个人’ (‘one person’) in ‘一个人面试十分钟’ (literally ‘one person interview 10 minutes’, meaning ‘each person is interviewed for 10 minutes’), those for time like ‘一年’ (‘one year’) in ‘一年休息两个月’ (literally ‘one year rest two months’, meaning ‘there are two months for rest in a year’), and those for actions as ‘一次’ (‘time’) in ‘一次跳五十下’ (literally ‘one time jump 50 time’, meaning ‘jump fifty times for once’). Double quantitative constructions have two important features. First, there must be two Quantitative Phrases, as the term ‘Double Quantitative Construction’ suggests, and the predicate of the construction is optional when the contextual information is adequate and clear, as in ‘十个人（吃）一锅饭’ (literally ‘ten people (eat) one pot of food’, where the verb ‘吃’ (‘eat’) can be omitted); Second, the Quantitative Phrases in some constructions can swap their positions, as in ‘十个人（吃）一锅饭’ (literally ‘ten people (eat) one pot of food’) and ‘一锅饭（吃）十个人’ (literally ‘one pot of food (eat) ten people’), both having the same meaning ‘ten people ate a pot of food’. However, there are constraints on position swap so that it is allowed only in some constructions. English has similar constructions with two Quantitative Phrases in a balanced way, like ‘the man loves eating hamburgers and he generally eats three hamburgers for a meal’ and ‘the student loves reading and he often reads four books within a week’. Different from Chinese, however, the two Quantitative Phrases occur post-verbally obligatorily and a preposition is usually needed to link them. They do not have the features that Chinese Double Quantitative Constructions have. Given the above differences in Chinese and English, research questions arise concerning L2 Chinese acquisition of the Double Quantitative Constructions. First, can English-speaking learners of Chinese acquire the feature that the verb is optional in some constructions? Second, can they acquire the feature that the Quantitative Phrases can swap their positions in some constructions and the constraints on position swap? Third, do Chinese interlanguage grammars develop as L2 learners’ Chinese proficiency progresses? To find answers to the above questions, the authors of the paper conducted an empirical study which involves 20 intermediate-level L2 learners, 21 advanced-level L2 learners and 20 native Chinese as controls. An acceptability judgment test and a sentence making test are used as instruments. Results indicate that L2 Chinese learners have acquired consciousness of the two features at the intermediate stage, but their interlanguage grammar concerning this construction is non-native-like even after they reach the advanced level in their Chinese proficiency. The results are discussed with reference to L1 transfer and subcategorization and thematic hierarchy of Chinese verbs.