A Corpus-based Study On The Acquisition Of Ditransitive Construction By Chinese English Majors

The current thesis, adopting the framework of construction grammar, through the comparison of the data from WECCL and ICE-GB tries to discuss the three problems: the categories of verbs used in the ditransitive constructions; prototypical feature of ditransitive constructions acquired; hierarchies of the meanings of ditransitive constructions in the process of acquisition. After the analysis of the data collected, we find that Chinese English majors only use three categories of verbs in ditransitive constructions, fewer than native speakers. Besides, the three kinds of meanings of ditransitive constructions have related meanings and form a family, in which successful transfer is the ptototype. Finally, through the analysis by SPSS, we find that the means the frequencies of verbs of these three categories used by Chinese English majors are 20.86, 3.00 and 2.00 and that the means of frequencies of verbs used by native speakers are 17.59, 3.33, 3.00, 2.20, 2.00 and 1.00. Therefore, hierarchies exist in the process of acquisition by Chinese English majors. Actual successful transfer lies in the center and it is easy to learn; future transfer and intention of transfer are close to the core sense; negation of transfer, obligation of transfer and enablement of transfer are far from the center and hard for the Chinese English majors to master. And for native speakers, actual successful transfer is in the center and it is easy to master; future transfer and enablement of transfer are close to the core sense; intention of transfer and negation of transfer are far from the center; obligation of transfer is further from the center and it is the most difficult meanings for native speakers to acquire.