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The Acquisition of L2 Causative Psych Verbs by the Chinese-Speaking English Learners

Author: KangJianDong
Tutor: WuHePing
School: Northwest Normal University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Causative Psych Verbs SLA Event-Frame Model Prototype Theory cognitive linguistics
CLC: H319
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2008
Downloads: 136
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Abstract

The present study investigates, within cognitive-based Event-Frame Model, how the Chinese-speakingsecond language (L2) learners of English develop L2 knowledge of causative psych verbs. It is an endeavorto provide a unified account of the Chinese learners’cognitive process on the acquisition of these verbs byanalyzing two key factors concerned, i.e. the cross-linguistic influence and the L2 proficiency levels.To disclose the process more specifically, the Event-Frame analysis is performed on the threecategories of causative psych verbs (i.e. analytic, morphological and lexical forms). By decomposing theevent structures of these verbs, it is demonstrated that the lexical and morphological constructions involve asub-event conflation, while this is not the case for analytic forms.These distinctions lead to a better understanding of the prototypes of the causative psych verbs inEnglish and Chinese. It is argued that the difference between the English and Chinese prototypes may causelearning difficulties for acquiring psych verbs. The current study, therefore, examines to what extent thesimilarities and differences between the two languages would influence the development of L2 knowledgeon causative psych verbs.Three groups of 30 learners of different L2 proficiency levels (i.e. elementary, intermediate, andadvanced) and 1 group of 30 native speakers of English participated in this study. They were asked to finishtwo tasks, which are deliberately designed to illicit the learners’real language performance.The results reflected that the learners of elementary group showed great preference to the analyticform. This trend is changed fundamentally as the learners displayed more sensitivity to the sub-eventconflation. Furthermore, the results of the paired sample t-tests revealed that the mutually existed causativepsych verbs are significantly easier to be acquired except for the learners in the elementary group. Theseresults confirmed that not only the difference but also the similarities in the two languages would result inthe learning difficulties.So far, there is sufficient evidence to accept the claim that the Chinese learners can gradually acquirethese verbs within the paradigm of the Event-Frame Model. Therefore, we can say the cognitive-basedinterpretation is more plausible to explain the real cognitive style shift in the L2 causative psych verbsacquisition.

The Acquisition of L2 Causative Psych Verbs by the Chinese-Speaking English Learners

Abstract

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