A Usage-based Approach To The Acquisition Of Pied-piping Prepositions By Chinese EFL Learners

As an unmarked construction in English,preposition pied-piping is usually acquired early and used frequently by the natives.It is a kind of authentic English expression and a formal style in English writing(Jach,2017).Therefore,it is an essential part for English learning.However,it is hard for Chinese EFL learners to master,because they do not know the very subtle difference well in using rules between it and preposition stranding and make the common mistake of null prepositions.Consequently,research on the improvement of Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of pied-piping prepositions deserves more attention.At present,the hot topic in Second Language Acquisition has shifted from rule-based acquisition theory to usage-based acquisition theory.Usage-based language acquisition theory emphasizes the role of frequency in construction acquisition.It advocates that language acquisition is not innate but the result of learning and a bottom-up process during which language examples are abstracted into constructions gradually.But,little research has studied acquisition of pied-piping prepositions and the issue of construction overgeneralization from the usage-based perspective.This research was conducted from the perspective of usage-based language acquisition theory to explore whether Chinese EFL learners could acquire pied-piping prepositions by the manipulation of input frequency of different expressions of the construction and if so,whether their acquisition could last for a period of time and whether overgeneralization of pied-piping prepositions would occur during their learning.Two classes with about 30 non-English-major freshmen in each were invited to this research,one named experimental group and the other control group randomly.They were required to finish a pretest,posttest and delayed posttest one week later,all of which were composed of one grammatical acceptability judgment task(comprehension task)and a Chinese-to-English translation task(production task).Besides,between the pretest and posttest,they completed a passage readingcomprehension task working as the manipulation to input frequency.The mean scores of each task in the three tests were compared and analyzed through Independent-samples t test and Paired-samples t test to answer the three research questions.Results showed that right after receiving the frequent input of preposition pied-piping,Chinese EFL learners’ acceptability to the right use of pied-piping prepositions was significantly higher than that in the pretest in the judgment task,while their correct use of preposition pied-piping did not significantly increase in the translation task.Besides,one week later,they could maintain their high acceptability to the right use of pied-piping prepositions,but still could not correctly use significantly more pied-piping prepositions in the translation tasks.In addition,under such learning condition,overgeneralization of preposition pied-piping may occur in judgment tasks but may not take place in translation tasks.The divergence between the results of the two kinds of task suggests that L2 learners’ language acquisition may vary from task to task.The present study confirms the role of frequency of input in learners’ English acquisition and provides implication for pedagogy and future empirical studies based on usage-based language acquisition theory or the research on preposition pied-piping.