Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article reports on a study investigating the second language (L2) acquisition of the plural and human features in Mandarin Chinese by adult Korean speakers. Both plural and human features are represented in Korean and Chinese, but assembled in different ways. Forty-eight L2 learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels and twenty-three native speakers of Chinese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task. The results show that L2 learners can successfully reassemble the two features, though L2 specific contexts and restrictions on feature realization are difficult. The advanced group has achieved native-like performance. The findings provide empirical evidence for the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009).

Keywords

classifiers feature reassembly L2 Chinese the human feature the plural feature

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Chierchia

(1998) Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6: 339–405.

Chao

(1968) A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Cho

Slabakova

(2014) Interpreting definiteness in a second language without articles: The case of L2 Russian. Second Language Research 30: 159–90.

Cho

Slabakova

(2015) A feature-based contrastive approach to the L2 acquisition of specificity. Applied Linguistics 29: 318–39.

Corbett

(2000) Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gibson

Wexler

(1994) Triggers. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 407–54.

Hawkins

Chan

(1997) The partial availability of universal grammar in second language acquisition: The ‘failed’ functional features hypothesis. Second Language Research 13: 187–226.

Hawkins

Hattori

(2006) Interpretation of English multiple wh-questions by Japanese speakers: A missing uninterpretable feature account. Second Language Research 22: 269–301.

Huang

(2009) The syntax of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Hwang

(2013) The acquisition of Korean plural marking by native English speakers. Unpublished PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Georgetown, KY, USA.

11.

Hwang

Lardiere

(2013) Plural-marking in L2 Korean: A feature-based approach. Second Language Research 29: 57–86.

12.

Kang

(1994) Plurality and other semantic aspects of common nouns in Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3: 1–24.

13.

Lardiere

(2009) Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 25: 173–227.

14.

Lee

(2015) L2 acquisition of number marking: A bidirectional study of adult learners of Korean and Indonesian. Unpublished PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Georgetown, KY, USA.

15.

Lee

Lardiere

(2016) L2 acquisition of number marking in Korean and Indonesian: A feature-based approach. In: Stringer

, et al. (eds) Proceedings of the 13th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2015) (pp. 113–23). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

16.

Lee

Lardiere

(2017) Feature reassembly in the acquisition of plural marking by Korean and Indonesian bilinguals: A bidirectional study. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 9(1): 73–119.

17.

(2004) Boya Chinese: Volume 1. Beijing: Peking University Press.

18.

(1999) Plurality in a classifier language. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8: 75–99.

19.

Mai

Yuan

(2016) Uneven reassembly of tense, telicity and discourse features in L2 acquisition of the Chinese shì … de cleft construction by adult English speakers. Second Language Research 32: 247–76.

20.

Rankin

Unsworth

(2016) Beyond poverty: Engaging with input in generative SLA. Second Language Research 32: 563–72.

21.

Rothman

Slabakova

(2017) The generative approach to SLA and its place in modern second language studies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 40: 417–42.

22.

Schwartz

(1993) On explicit and negative data effecting and affecting competence and ‘linguistic behavior’. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 15: 147–63.

23.

Schwartz

Sprouse

(1994) Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In: Hoekstra

Schwartz

(eds) Language acquisition studies in generative grammar (pp. 317–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

24.

Schwartz

Spouse

(1996) L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research 12: 40–72.

25.

Smith-Stark

(1974) The plurality split. In: Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 657–72). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.

26.

Sohn

(1994) Korean. London: Routledge.

27.

Spinner

(2013) The second language acquisition of number and gender in Swahili: A feature reassembly approach. Second Language Research 29: 455–79.

28.

Tsimpli

Dimitrakopoulou

(2007) The interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23: 215–42.

29.

White

(1987) Against comprehensible input: The input hypothesis and the development of L2 competence. Applied Linguistics 8: 95–110.

30.

White

(2003) Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

31.

Yang

(2002) Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

32.

Yang

(2004) Universal Grammar, statistics or both? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 451–56.

33.

Yang

Montrul

(2017) Learning datives: The Tolerance Principle in monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Second Language Research 33: 119–44.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.13 MB

Reassembly of plural and human features in the L2 acquisition of Chinese by adult Korean speakers

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material