A Corpus-based Study Of Ditransitive Construction In Chinese College Learners' English Writing

Ditransitive construction, that is, NP1+V+NP2+NP3 in traditional grammar, as one of the most frequently used sentence patterns, has been one of the concerns in linguistic study and attracted much attention from linguists with different theoretical background. Many researches have been conducted from perspectives of structuralism, transformational grammar and cognitive grammar. Some researchers focus on the detailed analysis and description of linguistic entities; some focus on the correlation between the ditransitive construction and the corresponding dative construction. There are also some researchers who show great interest in the comprehension of the construction and the verb types associated with the construction. However, most of the studies are devoted to the theoretical aspect. There are not many researches that focus on learners' use of this construction. So the present research takes in the previous theoretical findings , focuses on ditransitive construction in Chinese college learners' English writing and tries to find out the features of how Chinese college learners use this construction in their writing.The present study is conducted mainly within the framework of Goldberg's construction grammar. According to construction grammar, constructions, or pairings of form and meaning, are the basic units in a language. In construction grammar, there is no clear boundary between lexicon and syntax, pragmatics and semantics. In Goldberg's construction grammar, the traditional structure NP1+V+NP2+NP3 is the conceptualization of daily events of transferring things and conveys the meaning that agent (NPl)acts to cause recipient(NP2) to receive patient(NP3). In terms of the approach to ditransitive construction, Goldberg mainly focuses on the construction sense, verbs which can enter this construction, and the semantic constraints of arguments which is completely different from traditional grammar.Following Goldberg's approach, the present study mainly analyses the ditransitive construction in Chinese college learners' English writing from perspectives of verb types, construction senses and arguments (agent, recipient, patient). Some conclusions have been drawn as follows:1) Chinese college learners overuse ditransitive constructions in their writing compared with native speakers, and the verb types they use are relatively fewer;2) In terms of ditransitive senses, Chinese college learners overuse Sense A and Sense D, but underuse Sense F a lot;3) As for agent and recipient, Chinese college learners prefer 1^st person and 2^nd person pronouns to 3^rd person pronouns in their writing and features a speech-like style; with regard to agent, Chinese college learners show no obvious preference in the choice of nonhuman agents and human agents, and they use them equally; in terms of recipient, Chinese learners overuse human recipients; in the choice of patient, Chinese college learners overuse thing and information patients and underuse title patients a lot;4) Learners with different English proficiency display different features in the use of ditransitive construction. As a whole, learners with high English proficiency master ditransitive construction better than those with low English proficiency. Specifically, advanced learners produce fewer ditransitive constructions with more verb types, while learners with low English proficiency produce more ditransitive constructions with fewer verb types. And the senses of ditransitive constructions produced by learners with low English proficiency are mainly central sense, while advanced learners use other senses as well as the central sense. In terms of agent and recipient, learners with low English proficiency prefer 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns to 3^rd person pronouns, while advanced learners favor 3^rd person pronouns a lot. In the choice of agent, learners with low English proficiency favor human agents while advanced learners favor nonhuman ones. In addition, learners with low English proficiency use human recipients more frequently than advanced learners. With regard to patient, advanced learners use thing patients more frequently and information patients less frequently than learners with low English proficiency.It is found that Chinese college learners are influenced by mother tongue when they use ditransitive construction in their writing. And both positive transfer and negative transfer occur. They master ditransitive constructions similar to Chinese well, while with regard to those different from Chinese, college learners tend to make errors. As for ditransitive constructions which do not occur in Chinese, college learners use them less. Perhaps they adopt the strategy of "avoidance" so as to avoid making too many errors. In addition, in producing ditransitive construction, Chinese college learners display the nature of learner language that is their writing shows an informal, speech-like style.The research is just a tentative study on the use of ditransitive construction by Chinese college learners and it is hoped that the findings will be of some significance in the teaching and learning of ditransitive construction.