A Study On L2 Acquisition Of The English Copula BE By Chinese-speaking English Beginners

The study on the acquisition of verbs has long been a focus in the field of language acquisition. As one of the link verbs, the English verb Be is quite a unique one both as a pure copula and an auxiliary behaving a full set of both finite and nonfinite forms in auxiliary function; it is also unique among English verbs in having as many as eight different forms (am, is, are ,was, were, been,being and be) and usually a very difficult point to acquire for beginners of both L1 and L2 English learners. This thesis sets out to investigate the process that how Chinese-speaking English beginners acquired copula be and the possible factors that exerted influence on the acquisition process. Besides, the role of L1 was investigated in the process. In the study, grammaticality judgment task, translation task and interviewing were used. Subjects were 101 Chinese junior school students in Grade One and Two. The following results were found in the experiments:1) Chunking learning manifests a strong feature in the acquisition of English copula be for Chinese-speaking English beginners at the initial stage. Consequently, low-level L2 learners, especially those at the initial stage of L2 learning, tend to overuse copula be when the subject is pronominal, and frequency of the correct use of copula be is higher when the subject is pronominal than when it is nominal. Subject variable has an effect on all groups of participants in learning and using English copula be.2) Implicit learning acts as the possible primary type of learning, the primary factor that influences the Chinese-speaking English beginners' acquisition of English copula be. As a result, with the availability of UG, low-level L2 learners, especially those at the initial stage of L2 learning, tend to correctly use or overuse copula be when the predicative denotes permanent property. The absence of copula be is more likely to occur when the predicative has temporary features.3) Chinese-speaking English beginners, particularly those at the initial stage, tend to be semantically-driven in using English copula be by matching the semantic schema of that Chinese shi with the target be, neglecting the proper structure of the target language. Fewer mistakes were made in the pattern NP shi NP in the form-meaning matching from Chinese to English.4) Explicit learning in copula acquisition takes place at a later stage.After analyzing the above results, the following underlying reasons are found: 1) despite the fact that chunking may be the main principle of human cognition, chunking of pronoun +be can be largely attributed to the differences in frequency of occurrence in input and differences in inflectional changes between pronoun and common noun; the instruction participants received in their daily classroom English study partly enhanced the chunking of pronoun +be; 2) UG is accessible in EFL learning. The nature of language universal determines the fact that whether English as L1 or L2, predicatives with permanent or temporary property largely exert influence on the acquisition of copula be for those English beginners; 3) the beginners' lower English proficiency and the complexity of the target structure of be resulted in their preference to L1 as the inter-media and preference to a mechanical semantically-driven matching semantic schema of that Chinese shi with the target be, neglecting the proper structure of the target language and 4) in recognizing the singular or plural form of the subject( especially the plural form of nominal subject) and choosing the correct morphological form of be in the given linguistic context to agree with the given subject, further progressing is needed and explicit rules on agreement are necessary.The paper consists of eight main parts. The first part mainly introduces the research questions and the origin. The second part is a linguistic and cross-linguistic analysis of English copula be. In the third part, based on the review of the previous studies, the necessity of the research is stated. The fourth part is the theoretical framework of the study and the theories involved in the study including the implicit/explicit (language) learning, chunk and chunking, UG and the dual-systems of language acquisition. The fifth part presents the design of the experiments in the study, including subjects, materials, variables and levels, tasks and instruments and procedures. In the sixth part, the results are presented and the underlying reasons are explored in the seventh part. The eighth one is the conclusion, which briefly summarizes the main findings and its significance, the practical implications, the limitations and questions to be explored in the future.