The Acquisition Of The Functional Category-s By Chinese Learners Of English

The specification of functional categories in second language syntax has been a hot topic in current second language research. The omission of functional categories, which is very common in second language learners'production, is discussed from different perspectives. The dispute is whether the omission of functional categories indicates the impairment of interlanguage syntactic system. The present study aims to investigate the morphological and syntactic impairment debate in recent years and to further discuss the potential relationship between morphological inflection and syntactic system by examining the specification of functional category–s in Chinese students'English based on Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners within the framework of MP. In addition, some possible explanations for the omission of functional category–s are explored. It is believed that the findings in this study can give English teachers a better understanding about the acquisition of functional category–s by Chinese learners of English and enhance English education.Based on the analysis of the research data, we come to the following conclusions. Firstly, Chinese learners of English can correctly specify the functional category–s in the obligatory present tense context both in written and spoken English, which implies that their interlanguage syntactic system functions well. Secondly, Chinese learners of English sometimes omit the functional category–s in obligatory present tense context. The omission rate in spoken English is higher than in written English. Thirdly, Chinese learners of English show an asymmetric inflection of regular and irregular verbs both in written and spoken English. They specify irregulars more accurately than regulars. Fourthly, the missing inflection of surface morphology of functional category–s in second language does not indicate the impairment of syntactic system. Chinese learners'interlanguage syntactic system functions well. We propose that the missing inflection of surface morphology of functional category–s can be accounted for within the framework of Agree developed by Adger, the language acquisition theory and the language transfer theory. The present study claims that the omission of functional category–s in Chinese learners'English results from the complex syntactic properties of functional category–s, the acquisition order of verbal morphemes in second language and the influence of first language. In addition, the asymmetric inflections of regular and irregular verbs are discussed from the perspective of Contextual Complexity Hypothesis. Finally, the different inflections on functional category–s in spoken and written English of Chinese students are further explored.