Abstract
This paper presents new results of an ongoing cross-sectional corpus study investigating the acquisition of Chinese word order by Italian L1 learners. Specifically, it focuses on the acquisition of ‘double-nominative constructions’, as well as the correct sequential organisation of topical and focal information in the Chinese sentence. The analysis is conducted on three learner corpora, created by the Author on the basis of a test submitted to three groups of university (BA and MA)-level Italian L1 learners of Chinese, for a total of 132 learners. Quantitative and qualitative analysis conducted on the collected data show that, while the double-subject construction may appear as a simple and straightforward pattern, it is in fact a rather difficult construction to acquire and spontaneously produce for Italian L1 learners. Rather, students tend to use patterns they are used to in their L1 (or other L2s, such as English). These include the [NP1 have NP2], [NP1 的 NP2], or [NP1adjectival predicate] patterns, among other types, thus confirming the inhibitive L1 transfer hypotheses of this study.
Highlights
This paper presents new results of an ongoing cross-sectional study investigating the acquisition of Chinese1 word order by Italian L1 learners
This paper looks at negative L1 transfer phenomena that affect the production of double-nominative constructions by Italian L1 learners of Chinese
Production rate of double-nominative constructions is low across all sentence types and across all proficiency levels, including MA students
Summary
This paper presents new results of an ongoing cross-sectional study investigating the acquisition of Chinese word order by Italian L1 learners. Such constructions are tightly connected with the topic-prominent nature of the language, which is a fundamental typological feature of Chinese: as discussed in detail, this construction allows hosting topical elements (NP1, dàxiàng ‘elephants’) in the sentence-initial position, while maintaining focal (informationally salient) elements at the very end (in this case, cháng ‘long’ or bízi cháng ‘nose (is) long’ depending on the context). Such a pattern is not allowed in most Indo-European languages of Europe, including English (1.E) and Italian (1.I). They may tend to produce patterns that are closer to the structures
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