Factors accounting for acquisition of polysemous shàng ‘to go up’-phrases in Chinese as a second language (CSL)

Abstract

AbstractThis study looks into how factors such as Chinese L1 prototypicality, imageability, concreteness, literalness and frequency account for Chinese L2 acquisition of polysemous shàng ‘to go up’-phrases. As the first step, Chinese L1 speakers (N = 92) were instructed to produce five sentences with the verb shàng ‘to go up’. The production prototypicality pattern was achieved. This led to the selection of a list of 20 test items. In the second step the list of items were used to measure Chinese L2 learners' acquisition of them with a translation task (N = 96). Following this another four independent groups of Chinese L1 participants were asked to rank the test items according to their perceptions of teaching sequence in CSL (N = 95) and rate them based on their perceptions of imageability (N = 68), concreteness (N = 52) and literalness (N = 63). The same set of data was also checked in two Chinese corpora for the objective frequency in language use. The analyses indicate that L1 perceptions are reliable in predicting the acquisition sequence of the target shàng-phrases in CSL. The sequence correlates significantly with the prototypicality patterns but not with concreteness, imageability or literalness rating patterns. No conclusion, however, can be drawn about how objective frequency in corpora contributes to the acquisition pattern because of discrepancy between the two corpora. The results of the study support the cognitive reality of prototypicality and have implications for prototypicality-based L2 research and teaching practice.