Acquisition of the Chinese Auxiliaries: Insights from Cross-Referential Learners’ Corpora of Chinese, English, and Japanese

Abstract

Chinese epistemic modal verbs “huì” “yào” are difficult to Japanese L1 learners, even C1 level Japanese L1 learners tend to lack “realis/irrealis” modality markers. This tendency is related to Japanese modal/tense/aspect system, namely, non-past tense marker “-ru” covers all irrealis situations. On the other hand, English L1 learners of Chinese use epistemic modal auxiliary verbs “huì” “yào” properly, this tendency might be related to the English auxiliary system which is quite similar to the Chinese auxiliary system. We also discuss overgeneralization by L1 English learners of Chinese. For example, overuse of “huì” by English L1 learners might be caused by the overgeneralization that “huì” is the same as English auxiliary “will”. In “TUFS-Shanghai International Studies University learner corpus of English”, Chinese learners of English display characteristic overuse of the modal verbs “would” and “will” to express habituality, reflecting overgeneralization of the Chinese modal verb “huì” while Japanese learners of English tend to omit “will” in future contexts.