中国初级学习者英语照应语习得研究

The acquisition of the English reflexives by pre-intermediate Chinese EFL learners

本研究考察60名初二、初三两组英语学习者习得照应语①的情况。他们一旦接触到照应语的正面证据,便开始照应语的习得。初三组习得单子句中近位宾语的约束快于远程的主语约束。在单子句、限定性双子句和非限定性双子句中,初三组对照应语受近位先行语约束的习得显著好于初二组。两组在非限定性双子句中,准确地确定照应语的先行语都显著好于限定性双子句。初级学习者习得照应语与中、高级学习者不太相同。在习得照应语的初始阶段,学习者不仅依靠正面证据和母语迁移,而且更多地依赖语篇层面的信息。

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating how English reflexives were acquired by 60 year-8 and year-9 Chinese EFL learners.They began to acquire the reflexives as soon as they were exposed to positive evidence of them.The year-9 group acquired local object binding faster than long-distance subject binding in the mono-clausal sentences.It also fared significantly better than the year-8 group in observing the locality requirement in mono-clausal,finite bi-clausal and nonfinite bi-clausal sentences.When identifying correct antecedents for English reflexives,both groups perform significantly better dealing with nonfinite bi-clausal sentences than dealing with finite bi-clausal sentences.The way they acquired English reflexives differed sharply from the way intermediate and advanced learners acquired them.It is suggested that at the initial stage of the acquisition of the English reflexives,not only do pre-intermediate learners rely on positive evidence and first-language transfer,but they also rely strongly on discourse-level information.