An Investigation Of The Speech Processing Strategies Used By Korean Learners While Acquiring Chinese Directional Complements

Based on the Multidimensional Model, this paper investigated 10 different kinds of Chinese Directional Complement used by Korean learners with 3 different Chinese proficiencies from the perspective of speech processing strategy. To be specific, we examined their acquisitional process by employing the methods of Implicational Scaling, correlation analysis and cluster analysis, on the basis of which, the acquisitional stages was proposed and the speech processing strategies which constrained their acquisition was discussed. In a word, this paper explored the acquisition of Chinese Directional Complement from a brand-new perspective, that is, a cognitive perspective, which will provide some insight into the methodology of investigating L2 acquisition of Chinese Directional Complement, and will also contribute to the teaching and testing of this item. Meanwhile we hope that the results of this research can deepen the understanding of the acquisition of this item for the teachers of teaching Chinese as a second language and thus do some help in the planning of teaching syllables, the writing of textbooks and the testing of Chinese Directional Complement.The significance of this research mainly lies in the following two aspects.(i) We divide the whole acquisitional process of Chinese Directional Complement into four stages. The general tendency is that the simple forms without objects are acquired first, then those with objects and finally the complex discrete forms. Semantically speaking, Directional Complement expressing directional meaning is acquired first followed by those denoting extensional meaning.(ii) We discuss the language processing strategies employed in different acquisitional stages. It is found that when acquiring Directional Complement without objects, L2 learners are constrained by the canonical order strategy of the target language, and while acquiring those with objects, they are constrained by both the canonical order strategy of their mother tongue and the target language.Generally speaking, all the L2 learners, irrespective of their Chinese proficiencies, have not well acquired Chinese Directional Complement, and even the high-proficiency learners are not able to move from the stage of target language canonical order to the stage of discrete form strategy due to the restriction of the canonical order strategy of the target language. In a word, both the changing of the order of special sentence patterns (Ba-structure and Bei-structure) and the canonical order strategy influence the acquisition of Chinese Directional Complement of L2 learners, and therefore it is difficult for Korean students to well acquire this item.