Topic Prominence In Typological Interlanguage Development Of Chinese Students' English

English and Chinese, as two distinct languages, belong to different language typological systems respectively. Chinese is a topic-prominent language in which topic plays an important role in the formation of a sentence whereas English is a subject-prominent language in which subject is an indispensable element that determines the English sentence pattern.Currently there are two interlanguage study tendencies in the research of second language acquisition. One is that interlanguage development proceeds along lines that are common to all learners; the other is that any interlanguage is shaped by features of the learner's native language. Though recent concerns on universal grammar have tended to lead to a de-emphasizing of the influence of native language on the acquisition of second language, there is more and more evidence available which indicates second language acquisition may be shaped and colored in varying degrees by the transfer of typological features from native language (Rutherford 1983; Trevise 1986; White 1987; Chaudrion & Parker 1990; Yip & Matthews 1995; Yang, 1999; Xiao, 2002; Jung, 2004). The previous studies usually explore the TP/SP issue in a pure syntactic way, focusing on the phenomenon description and they scarcely touch these typological structures in terms of a syntax-pragmatic approach, which would be more workable in identifying the interrelations between the pragmatic constraints and the acquisition of TP/ SP typological features by Chinese learners of English.This current study is made up of a task completion, with thirty sentences of Chinese-English Translation. The design of the tasks aims to elicit the interlanguage data with the Spontaneous Oral Task and Careful Translation Task in terms of TP structures. There are 90 Chinese students altogether involved in the experiment. They represent three different proficiency levels: preliminary, intermediate and advanced level. The experiment focuses on the six categories of typological TP interlanguage structures in Chinese students'spontaneous work and careful translation work in each of the three groups. These structures include Double Nominative (DN), Existential Constructions (EC), Pseudo Passives (PP), Null Element (NE), Periphrastic structures (PS), Subject-predicate disagreement (SPD). This study aims to investigate the general characteristics of topic-prominent typological interlanguage development of the Chinese English learners in terms of acquiring subject-prominent English syntactic structures in a systematic way.Out of the total data base, a statistical corpus is established on 90 eligible cases for the convenience of data analysis which is carried out by means of SPSS software for frequency Accounts, One-Way ANOVA tests and diagram illustrations. This study shows that the Chinese students at the preliminary level are strongly influenced by their native language and then transfer their Chinese form/function to English directly. TP properties are dominant, though there is substantial evidence of SP properties in the interlanguage of Chinese students of English. The Chinese students of English at each proficiency level have employed TP structures in their interlanguage to a certain extent. However, there is a general tendency that the frequency of using TP features in the interlanguage decreases and that of using SP structures increases with the development of learners'English proficiency level. The statistical analysis shows that the differences between different proficiency levels are mostly significant at p<0.05 level, while the differences between Intermediate Level and Advanced level in terms of DN, EC, PP and PS structures are not significant with the values p>0.05 ( p=0.605, 0.185, 0.233 and 0.118). This may be interpreted as there is a plateau for the Advanced Level students from the Intermediate Level students due to the fossilization. The development of interlanguage for Chinese students of English in terms of TP/SP typology is a process of both typological syntacticization and pragmaticization with an observable developmental route.The study also shows how the typological Chinese influence is manifested in the learner language of English in a hierarchical way of ease and difficulty. Hence a proposed hypothesis of Hierarchy of Difficulty in TP Structures for Chinese students at all levels can be predicted as following PS>EC >NL >PP>SPD>DN. The Topic-to-Subject Hypothesis is testified sound and valid in terms of the general interlanguage development route of the Chinese students of English. The figure shows that when the two languages come into contact as the Phase 1 and Phase 2 boxes indicate, the L1 linguistic and conceptual system will initially exert a dominant impact on the L2 or the L1 and L2 are mutually contributable to the interlanguage development. However, as the L2 proficiency increases, the L1 system gradually gives way to the L2. This dynamic process is illustrated by the embedded boxes within the three big boxes representing respectively L1, L2 and the developing interlanguage system.In accounting for the occurrence of these six TP structures in the interlanguage of Chinese students of English, the study sums up the three aspects of the main sources, namely, NL-related typological transfer, priority of pragmatic objective and failure of formal instruction. It is suggested that the source of these TP properties is an interaction of native language influence, semantic/pragmatic language universals. Some pedagogical implications are presented, suggesting that the one of the tasks for Chinese English teachers is to be aware of the striking features of TP/SP typology in SLA research and raise learners'typological linguistic awareness of both native language and second language.