The Unlearning Of Null Arguments By Chinese EFL Learners

The communication between China and English-speaking countries is becoming intense.With the development of generative grammar,there has been extensive research on null arguments.Including null subjects and null objects,null arguments refer to those arguments of verbs that do not have phonetic representation,but have grammatical functions and semantic contents.This research aims to investigate the unlearning of null arguments,make a contrastive analysis of unlearning different types of null arguments and examine some factors affecting the unlearning of null arguments.Within the framework of Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar(UG),this research conducts a grammaticality judgment test and a composition task to investigate and analyze the unlearning of null subjects and null objects by 154 Chinese college students learning English as a foreign language(EFL).The results and interpretations can be summarized as follows: Chinese college students rarely drop subjects and objects in their English writing.Chinese EFL learners come to realize that English belongs to non-null argument languages which do not allow null subjects and null objects.The results of the grammaticality judgment test display an asymmetry in rejecting ungrammatical English sentences with null subjects and null objects by Chinese learners,which can be attributed to the specification of Subject-Predicate Agreement(AGR)and Tense(T)in English,the presence of English expletive subjects,the salience of the subject position,different interfaces involved in unlearning null subjects and null objects,as well as the asymmetric input of overt subjects and objects in English learning.English is a non-pro-drop language,while Chinese allows the omission of subjects and objects when the topic chain has formed.Chinese learners at the elementary and intermediate levels in English are in the process of resetting their parameter from [+pro-drop] to [-pro-drop].The unlearning of null subjects and null objects at different positions(matrix and embedded sentences)is asymmetric,both in the grammaticality judgment test and in the composition task.Specifically,Chinese college students use more matrix subjects and matrix objects than embedded subjects and embedded objects respectively in their English writing.There are consistent results found in the grammaticality judgment test.Compared with rejecting English sentences with null matrix subjects and null matrix objects,Chinese college students have better performance in rejecting English sentences with null embedded subjects and null embedded objects.This asymmetry can be a result of the syntactic complexity,syntactic level and imbalanced input of English matrix sentences and embedded sentences as well as the sequence of EFL learning.There is a distinct difference between the unlearning of null referential subjects and null expletive subjects,no matter in the composition or the grammaticality judgment test.Due to parametric variations,expletive subjects are required in English,while no expletive subject exists in Chinese.It is easier for Chinese learners to acquire English expletive subjects than English referential subjects.And in the composition,Chinese learners use more referential subjects than expletive subjects.In contrast to expletive subject “it”,expletive subject “there” is more frequently used by Chinese learners in their writings.Typological differences between Chinese and English are employed to explain the asymmetric unlearning of null referential subjects and null expletive subjects.Null arguments are features of Chinese,as a topic-prominent language while in subject-prominent languages(such as English)expletive subjects are filled up when the subject position is unoccupied.Besides,transfer of Chinese topic structures also affects the unlearning of null objects,which is due to the different presentations of topic structures in Chinese and English.This research examines whether there is an asymmetry of unlearning null subjects and null objects,and also null arguments in matrix and embedded clauses,and attempts to analyze the causes.Furthermore,it intends to provide teachers some implications and suggestions for further English teaching and endeavors to help students to use English subjects and objects correctly.