| The English relative clause is an important grammatical item. It has drawn the attention of linguists, psychologists, translators as well as language teachers for its prevalent existence, complexity and high frequency in daily use. English as a foreign language in China is becoming ever more significant. In the process of learning English, Chinese learners’ acquisition of relative clauses, however, is not that promising.In recent years, studies on relative clause acquisition are on the increase. The proposal of NPAH(Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy), in particular, accelerates the research on the acquisition order of relative clauses. Along with the verification of the hypothesis, other hypotheses are put forward. Some go further to find out underlying reasons for these various hypotheses from such perspectives as contrastive analysis, error analysis, and native language transfer. Others also take avoidance into consideration as a supplement to error analysis. Previous studies, however, mostly probe into the acquisition of relative clauses from one single perspective, thus fail to give a comprehensive account of factors affecting relative clause acquisition. The construct of relative clauses, however, is a complex process, as will be influenced by various factors. What’s more, as for subjects of previous studies, they are learners at almost the same developmental stage of acquisition. Some studies may involve a further distinction of their overall English proficiency. They are still horizontal study in nature.Taking into consideration the long-process nature of relative clause acquisition, the present research chooses Chinese learners of English from three developmental stages of relative clause acquisition: 40 senior high school students in Grade 1, who have finished their relative clause study; 40 freshmen from non-English majors, who have gone through systematic study of relative clauses; 40 postgraduate English majors, who have a systematic knowledge of English relative clauses. Therefore, age, in other words, the developmental stage of acquisition is taken as a variable. In this way, the acquisition of relative clauses can be analyzed both horizontally among subjects of the same age and vertically among subjects of different ages. Four kinds of data elicitation methods are used, namely, grammar-assessment tests, sentence-combination tests, composition assignments and a questionnaire. The former three methods test comprehension, conditional production and automatic production respectively; the last one, being a qualitative method, serves as a summary of and complement to the former three quantitative methods. Through an analysis of these data, together with a comparison of the errors made by learners of different developmental stages of acquisition, underproduction is found in the acquisition process. In the meantime, non-linear construct factors affecting Chinese learners’ acquisition of English restrictive relative clauses are summarized. The data collected are further elaborated by means of SPSS 17.0.It is found that six major non-linear construct factors affect Chinese learners’ acquisition of English restrictive relative clauses. That is, the acquisition stage, types of task, native language transfer, intralingual factors, typology of language and teaching. These factors contribute to both Chinese learners’ errors and underproduction in their relative clause acquisition. Generally speaking, senior high school students in Grade 1 may be more influenced by native language transfer for their unfamiliarity with the target language; freshmen from non-English majors tend to be more affected by intralingual factors; as for postgraduate English majors, who are rather familiar with relative clause construction compared with the other two groups of learners, linguistic typology might be more of a significant factor. The other three factors also will be at work in the whole acquisition process due to the nature of English as a second language. |
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