| The relative clause has been one of the concerns of linguistic and second language acquisition studies. Owing to the great differences about the construction of relative clauses existing between English and Chinese, it poses much difficulty for Chinese learners and great interest for L2 acquisition researchers. Thus the study of Chinese learners'acquisition of relative clauses is of special significance.Previous studies in this field are mostly carried out in terms of the formal differences, while the present study, from the perspective of semantic functions and the formal and functional comparison between relative clauses in two languages, aims to explore the features and characteristics of Chinese learners'acquisition of the relative clause and some related affecting factors.The present study, departed from the formal and functional comparison between RCs in English and Chinese, observes that the same information conveyed by long nonrestrictive clauses in English is expressed in a form of Chinese independent clauses, which mostly function as clauses in complex sentences. Semantically, English nonrestrictive clauses have similar functions to Chinese Predicate Clauses. Next, it is the similarities in anaphoric reference between this type of English sentential relative clauses and its corresponding Chinese"zhe-clauses"that evoke the hypothesis that Chinese students can easily acquire and produce those English sentential relative clauses which are introduced by"which"or"as"anaphorically referring to the previous whole main clause with high correct ratio and better effect, owing to the positive transfer of their L1. The information and logical relation expressed by English CRCs is equivalent to what the corresponding combined complex sentences in Chinese want to express. And subordinate complex sentences in Chinese express the information and logical relation as English semi-adverbial RCs do. As to the implicit semantic relation, the invisible relation between English CRCs or SARCs and their main clauses is the same as that between two or more Chinese clauses without coordinators such as and, but. Besides, as Chinese subordinate complex sentences are mostly similar in syntactic function to English complex sentences with adverbial clauses, another hypothesis is put forward as: affected by negative transfer, when expressing in English the logical relations as reason, result and concession, etc., Chinese students would use adverbial clauses rather than SARCs in English. Similarly, compound sentences with coordinators are preferred by Chinese students over CRCs in English.The data used in this study come from 65 three-year college students in their second year of study from Wuhu Institute of Education, majoring in Business English and they were collected by interviews and tests. Then with both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data, the following findings are obtained:First, the results of the interview manifested that while they are learning the English relative clauses, the Chinese learners'distant psychotypology leads to underproduction or even avoidance in their use of English RCs.Second, Chinese learners avoid more complex structures when there is a simpler structure to express the same meaning.Third, affected by negative transfer, when expressing in English the logical relations as reason, result and concession, etc., Chinese students would use adverbial clauses rather than SARCs in English. Similarly, compound sentences with coordinators are preferred by Chinese students over CRCs in English.Fourth, Chinese students can more easily acquire and produce those English sentential RCs which are introduced by"which"or"as"anaphorically referring to the previous whole main clause with high correct ratio and better effect, owing to the positive transfer of their L1.Fifth, learners'acquisition of RCs follows a specific developmental route. Learners first acquire the RRC and then they acquire NRCs and SRCs. SARCs and CRCs are the last to be acquired. |
