中国英语学习者运动事件的双向概念迁移研究

Bidirectional conceptual transfer in motion events of Chinese EFL learners

概念迁移是迁移研究的新方向,但已有研究多聚焦语言层面而非概念层面,且较少关注逆向迁移。本研究从运动事件入手,结合图片故事描述和E-prime设计的视频相似性判断任务,考察不同水平英语学习者运动事件的表达方式和概念模式,并与汉、英本族语者进行比较,探究双向概念迁移是否存在及其与二语水平的关系。研究发现:1)英语学习者运动事件的表达方式和概念模式介于汉、英本族语者之间,发生了双向概念迁移;2)低水平学习者运动事件的表达方式和概念模式更接近汉语本族语者,而高水平学习者偏向英语本族语者,表明英语水平越高,正向迁移越弱而逆向迁移越强。

Conceptual transfer is a new research trend in the field of language transfer,yet previous studies mostly based their analyses on the linguistic level rather than the conceptual level.Moreover,the bi-directionality of conceptual transfer has been seldom touched upon.Targeting the conceptual domain of motion events,this study investigated the expressions and conceptual schemas of motion events of low-and high-proficiency EFL learners and compared them with native speakers of Chinese and English with the data collected from two tasks(i.e.a story retelling task and a similarity judgment task using E-Prime),to explore whether bidirectional conceptual transfer exists and how it is related to L2 proficiency.The results show that (1)Chinese EFL learners underwent bi-directional conceptual transfer,evidenced by their expressions and conceptual schemas of motion events different from native speakers of Chinese and English;(2)expressions and conceptual schemas of motion events of low-proficiency EFL learners were closer to those of native Chinese speakers while those of high-proficiency learners more approximate to native English speakers.This seems to suggest that the higher the English proficiency,the less prominent the forward transfer and the more prominent the backward transfer.