Error Analysis Of The Acquisition Of Chinese Resultative Based On Construction Grammar

Chinese resultative consists of a verb and a resultative complement—ither a verb or an adjective. As one of Chinese distinctive and complex structures, it is particularly important and used widely. In teaching Chinese as a foreign language, Chinese resultative is not only an important but also a difficult language point for foreign learners. Although some achievements have been made in error analysis of Chinese resultative, these researches lack sufficient explanation for the causes of resultative errors and the subjects of empirical studies are mainly learners from China's neighboring countries such as Korea and Thailand. Therefore, the present paper made an empirical research on error analysis of native English speakers'acquisition of Chinese resultative. By comparing Chinese resultative with English one on the basis of Construction Grammar, this study aimed to sort out common error types and to find out sources of these errors.In this study, test paper was used to collect research data. The results show that all the errors can be divided into four types—mission, avoidance, misordering and overrepresentation. Through the data analysis, the author finds out that there are basically two causes for these errors, which are transfer and intralingual interference. In the light of Construction Grammar, the author concludes that Chinese and English resultatives are different in the aspects of construction type, semantic constraint and aspectual property. Besides, Chinese and English resultatives have different selectional restrictions on resultative adjective. It is because of the enormous differences between Chinese and English resultatives that make native English-speaking learners prone to commit errors.After analyzing the data, the present research put forward some pedagogical suggestions for teaching Chinese as a foreign language:1) to minimize negative language transfer and intralingual interference; 2) to strengthen teachers'and learners'awareness of Chinese resultative construction and memorize it as a whole; 3) to place an emphasis on Construction Grammar and apply it to teaching Chinese as a foreign language to explore effective teaching or learning strategies and methods.