Abstract
Based on the Competition Model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1978; MacWhinney, 2005; MacWhinney, 2012), the present study investigates L2 cue strategies in the acquisition of Chinese notional passives by English-speaking and Japanese-speaking learners. Two experiments were conducted to examine both the comprehension and production of Chinese notional passives. The main findings included: 1) L2 learners’ acceptability of notional passive increased with improved Chinese proficiency but even advanced learners showed significant difference from Chinese native speakers; 2) L2 learners produced more notional passive sentences than bei-passive sentences and advanced learners showed no difference from Chinese native speakers; 3) Cross-linguistic influence seemed to affect L2 learners’ comprehension and production of Chinese notional passives. The results support the universality of animacy cue proposed by Gass (1987) but also suggest that word order and pragmatic factors may affect L2 learners’ cue strategies. The study also evidences the contribution of the input to the development of L2 cue strategies, which is in line with the predictions of the Competition Model.
Highlights
This study explores how L2 learners of Chinese make use of cues in their acquisition of Chinese notional passive, the use of animacy cue and word order cue in English-speaking and Japanese-speaking learn-How to cite this paper: Wang, J., & Xu, C
From the mean scores of the grammaticality judgment task (GJT), we found that L2 learners across four proficiency levels all accepted active sentence
If they had relied on word order cue, the inanimate noun in preverbal position would be regarded as the agent, which is contradictory to common sense, and they would reject the notional passive
Summary
This study explores how L2 learners of Chinese make use of cues in their acquisition of Chinese notional passive, the use of animacy cue and word order cue in English-speaking and Japanese-speaking learn-. How to cite this paper: Wang, J., & Xu, C. Cue Competition between Animacy and Word Order: Acquisition of Chinese Notional Passives by L2 Learners. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 5, 213-224. By conducting both a comprehension and a production experiment, we examine how the L2 learners’ cue strategies develop with increasing Chinese proficiency. Our study tests whether the learners’ L1 backgrounds play a role in their cue strategies
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