A Study On Null Subjects In Chinese Speakers' Acquisition Of English

This thesis examines the unlearning of null subjects in Chinese speakers'acquisition of L2 English. Chinese is a null-subject language but English is not, although sometimes colloquial English allows null subjects.Based on the analysis of Null Subject Parameter and of subjects in Chinese and English, this study probes an investigation into Chinese-speaking English Learners'acquisition of non-null subjects in English from four aspects: the referential pronoun subjects, the expletive"it"subjects, the expletive weather"it"subjects, and the expletive"there"subjects. Judgments by 18 junior high school students, 36 senior high school students, 20 university English major students, plus 6 native speakers of English, were obtained. The test was conducted with the method of grammaticality judgment task.The test results show that L1 transfer does affect L2 learners'acquisition of non-null subjects in English. The performance of L2 learners improves as their English proficiency grows. The data suggests that UG remains functioning in SLA.