Acquisition Research On The Boundary-Crossing Meaning Of English Preposition In

Within the framework of Minimalist Program, the present study investigates the acquisition of the boundary-crossing in with the help of Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis. The questionnaire results from Chinese freshmen of English majors in a college and English native speakers show that there are great discrepancies in the use of the boundary-crossing in between them. Value by functional categories firstly gives syntactic explanations to the protypical locative meaning of in. Secondly, under the background construed by the Image-Schema theory, semantic features of complements of prepositions and verbs, and their syntactic relations when the boundary-crossing in appears are found out. Features that the Chinese boundary-crossing expression jin…li has to satisfy are also searched out. Finally, Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis gives a description to the right acquisition process of the boundary-crossing in, through which reasons that Chinese learners of English cannot acquire and use the boundary-crossing in well are discovered. The present study is a good attempt to apply Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis in second language acquisition, and also a helpful supplement to studies on the boundary-crossing meaning. The present study suggests that it is practical to combine a leading theory with another theory or theories to explain linguistic problems. It also provides some instructive suggestions for English teaching of the boundary-crossing in, which will play an active role in guiding the learning of this meaning of in for Chinese learners of English.Conclusions that have been reached are as follows. Firstly, Chinese learners of English are not quite familiar with the boundary-crossing in, which is proved by three deviations: the first one is the overuse of into in the boundary-crossing context where in can be used; the second one is the improper use of in when it is unacceptable in the boundary-crossing context; the third one is to use into and in with no clear distinction. Secondly, compared with the boundary-crossing expression in Chinese, semantic features that license the boundary-crossing in are much more, but the familiarity and the mastery of these features for Chinese learners of English are poor. Thirdly, it's easy for Chinese learners of English to make mistakes in the process of re-assembling features that license the boundary-crossing in. Fourthly, Chinese learners of English are not well aware of features, let alone the feature priority and the feature strength. All these could be the reasons that the boundary-crossing in cannot be acquired successfully. In addition, the low English learning level of Chinese learners of English may also have a possible influence on the successful acquisition of the boundary-crossing in.