"What Hinders the Success of Adult Second Language Acquisition:
An Interface Problem in Adult Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese"

Abstract

It is a general phenomenon in the second language acquisition that the majority of the adult learners are unable to acquire a second language with complete success. This study looks into the acquisition of Chinese wh- words by English and Japanese speakers, and explores the factors which hinder adult second language acquisition. Chinese wh-words, like shenme (what), shei (who), shenmeshihou (when), nali (where), weishenme (why), are ambiguous. When used in a question like ni mai le xie shenme (What did you buy), shenme is a question word, but when used in ni xiangmai shenme ma, shenme is used as an indefinite pronoun. Whether wh-words in Chinese can be used as indefinite pronouns involves conditions having to do with the interface between syntax and semantics, i.e. such wh-words are bound structurally as well as semantically by a relevant constituent (cf. Huang 1982; Li 1992; Lin 1998). To study how English and Japanese speakers learn wh-words as indefinite pronouns in Chinese and to explore how the indefinite wh-words are linked and constrained syntactically and semantically in their grammar of Chinese, we investigate 14 English speakers and 22 Japanese speakers, who are either university professors engaged in Chinese teaching and research in Britain and Japan, or MA or Ph.D. students from Britain, the US, and Japan, who have been studying in China. These speakers can be said to represent the group of learners with the most advanced proficiency in Chinese. In addition, we also include 20 Chinese native speakers as the control group. Our findings indicate that with the group of English/Japanese learners of Chinese as a second language, under certain circumstance the indefinite wh-words in their grammar of Chinese can be successfully bound. But in other instances, wh-words and the syntactic and semantic binding relation fails to establish. Our analyses demonstrate that factors giving rise to the observed syntax and semantics mismatch in the second language grammar include: (i) the internal complexities at the interface level of the second language grammar, (ii) lexical categories involved in the interface and their categorical status in the grammar of native Chinese speakers, (iii) the Chinese data the second language learners are exposed to, and (iv) their first language transfer, etc.

"從漢語二語習得中的介面問題看影響成人二語習得成功的因素"

演講大綱

二語習得中的一個普遍現象是，絕大多數的成人最終都無法完全成功地掌握一門外語。通過對說英語和日語的人學習漢語wh-不定代詞的調查，我們將討論影響成人二語習得成功的因素。漢語中的wh-詞，如："什麼、誰、什麼時候、哪里、為什麼"等，是有歧義的，它可以用作疑問詞，如："你買了些什麼？"，它也可以用作不定代詞，如："你想買什麼嗎？"。在漢語中，wh-詞是否可以作不定代詞涉及到句法和語義的介面關係，它必須受到一個制約成分在句法和語義上的制約(cf. Huang 1982; Li 1992; Lin 1998)。為了研究說英語和說日語的人學習掌握漢語wh-不定代詞，調查制約成分在他們的漢語二語語法中能否對wh-不定代詞在語義和句法的介面上進行連接和制約，我們對14名母語是英語的人和22名母語是日語的人進行了調查，他們都是在英國和日本高校多年從事漢語教學或漢學研究的教授，博士生以及在中國高校攻讀碩士或博士學位的英國、美國和日本研究生，可以說他們代表了說英語和說日語人學習漢語的最高水準（學習漢語的最終狀態）。同時我們還包括了20名中國人作為控制組。我們的實驗結果顯示，在說英語和日語人的漢語二語語法裏，制約成分在某些情況下是可以對wh-詞進行成功制約的，但在另外一些情況下wh-詞與其制約成分在句法和語義介面上卻出現線路不通。我們的分析表明造成漢語二語語法中出現句法和語義介面連接失敗的因素包括：二語語法中介面關係的內在困難，介面關係中所涉及成分的詞類性質、這些成分在中國人漢語語法裏的狀況、二語學習者所接觸的漢語語料、第一語言遷移、等等。