| International researchers have published a considerable amount of literature on usagebased approaches to language acquisition in the past decades.However,domestic research in this field is relatively deficient,and second language acquisition studies on verb-argument constructions(VACs)have not attached importance to so far.Now,relative research on the theoretical review of usage-based approaches is not perfect at home,and related empirical studies mainly focus on the role of input with less emphasis on the features of the production and L1 transfer.Thus,this study aims to investigate the production and its development of English VACs by Chinese L2 learners,focusing on features and changes of frequency distribution and L1 transfer in the L2 production of VACs.Three research questions are as follows:(1)What are the characteristics of the production and development of English VACs by L2 learners in the three tests?(2)What are the characteristics of verb frequency distribution and its development in the production of L2 learners' English VACs in the three tests?(3)What are the characteristics of L1 transfer and its development in L2 learners' English VACs production in the three tests?A picture composition task was carried out to collect data.34 English-major students participated in the task.Participants were required to write a story in the past tense and make a brief comment in English and Chinese successively according to the given pictures in the English writing class.The time for English and Chinese writing was 30 minutes and 15 minutes,namely.The data were collected three times: the beginning of the first semester,the end of the second semester,and the end of the fourth semester,respectively.102 English narratives and the corresponding Chinese versions were collected.The data were coded along four dimensions to facilitate data analysis: the type of English VACs,the congruity of expression between English and Chinese,the correctness of use,and the type of language transfer.Based on data annotation,this study first summarized the overall characteristics of L2 learners' English VACs production in the three tests,and then observes the development features through the target construction production of the single task.Next,according to the token-type frequency of learners' verbs,it investigated the features of the verbs' distribution and its development in the target constructions.Finally,the paper analyzes the characteristics of L1 transfer and transfer changes in the production of L2 learners' English VACs from the individual level and the group level.Major findings include:(1)The total production of different types of English VACs was distributed unevenly,and VL construction took the lion's share.The production of different constructions did not increase or decrease over time.The accuracy of English VACs was high,which indicated that Chinese L2 learners were able to master English VACs well.The accuracy of different constructions did not grow or decline over time.(2)Learners' VL construction occupied the highest type-frequency of the verb,which suggested that the productivity of VL construction was highest,and VL constructions tend to be highly applicable to new items.The total production of the verbs populating in each target VACs conformed to near-Zipfian distribution,since the most frequent word occurred approximately twice as often as the second most frequent word,three times as often as the third most frequent word,etc.The smaller the number of types in each category,the larger the degree to which the pathbreaking exemplar took the lion's share.The leading exemplars of the target VACs varied over time,and Zipf's law only applied to a particular case.(3)Positive transfer mainly occurred in Chinese L2 learners' English VACs,and participants showed evident individual variation in their L1 transfer.Special Z tests and Chi-square tests were employed to compare the proportion of positive and negative transfer and compare the changes in the proportion of each type of transfer,respectively.The results of special Z-tests revealed that there were significant differences between positive transfer and negative transfer in the three tests while the proportion of positive and negative transfer in a single VAC construction was significantly different in some cases.The chi-square test results showed that the positive and negative transfer did not increase or decrease over time,and there was no significant difference in the changes.The present study has theoretical and pedagogical implications.Theoretically,it provides the data and references from Chinese L2 learners for the research on the acquisition of English VACs.Pedagogically,it suggests that integrating the usage-based approach to language acquisition into classroom teaching can help explore a systematical knowledge of the development of Chinese learners' VACs.Meanwhile,based on the characteristics of positive and negative transfer in English construction production,teachers can design specific teaching methods to improve the teaching effect on English VACs and help students acquire the constructions more effectively. |
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