Chinese EFL Learners’ Perception of English Resultative Constructions

Abstract

This paper delves into some syntactic and semantic properties of English and Chinese resultative constructions and examines how Chinese EFL learners perceive English RCs via a survey among 32 Chinese college students. The subjects were asked to identify whether 14 RCs of seven different types are grammatical and translate them into Chinese. The findings of the survey reveal that they have difficulties in comprehending English RCs due to cross-linguistic differences between the two languages in terms of the resultative phrase, word order, direct object restriction, dynamic restriction, and animate instigator constraint. These differences are reflected on the seven RC types, which exhibit different accuracy rates in their highest order as follows: selected transitive RCs with AP (STRC-AP, 100%), unselected transitive RCs with PP (UTRC-PP, 100%), intransitive RCs with PP (IRC-PP, 100%), selected transitive RCs with AP (STRC-AP, 75%), unselected transitive RCs with AP (UTRC-AP, 68.75), fake reflexive RCs with AP (FRRC-AP, 45.3%), and intransitive RCs with AP (IRC-AP, 31.5%). We argue that the subjects’ errors in their grammatical judgment are triggered by their L1 transfer into their target language.