| Ll transfer has long been one of the essential components in SLA studies. Researchers have been interested in markedness as a source of explanation in SLA since the 1970s. Markedness theory from both linguistic perspective (Eckman,1977) and cognitive perspective (Kellerman,1977) conclude that markedness has an essential role in Ll transfer. Researchers focused on analyzing learners' transferability of their Ll from linguistic and cognitive perspectives based on the comparison of the relative markedness of LI and L2 features and the survey of prototypicality of Ll features and psychotypology of learners.Based on the previous studies, the present study is conducted to explore the acquisition of English RCs, in order to find out the characteristics of Chinese students' English RCs learning and to see how the students' native language influences the learning process from cognitive perspective by means of contrastive analysis and error analysis. Meanwhile, the errors made by Chinese students at different proficiency levels are classified and the possible causes are explored. Besides, the present study also examines the frequency of RC use, distribution as well as the acquisition order of English RCs on the basis of five main types, that is:subject (SU), direct object (DO), object of preposition (OPREP), genitive (GEN) and object of comparative (OCOMP); the result of which with an aim to validate the prediction of Ll transfer from Markedness Differential Hypothesis raised by Eckman (1977) and learners'perception of language distance (psychotypology) and prototypicality proposed by Kellerman (1977).The research data are collected through the instruments of three testing materials (Sentence Translation Test; Sentence Combination Test and Grammatical Judgment Test) and one questionnaire at two different proficiency levels including 90 middle school students:45 first-year senior high school students as the lower proficiency level group; 45 third-year senior higher school students as the higher proficiency level group. After leaving out incomplete responses,30 subjects from each group are picked out for the final analysis. Through the analysis and discussion of the data and statistics, the major findings of the study are summarized as follows:1. Six types of RC errors that traced back to Ll interference are identified. The percentages of errors in different types of RCs demonstrate a noticeable decrease with the improvement of language proficiency. For the reasons, both the markedness degree of the language structure and learners' perception of their Ll structure (prototypicality) can contribute to the transfer phenomenon, while the predictive power of psychotypology on RC transfer phenomenon partly contradicts the hypothesis raised by Kellerman (1977).2. In the early years of Chinese students' learning of English relative clauses follow such a developmental route as "GEN/SU> DO> OCOMP> OPREP". This special order revealed that the degree of difficulty partly corresponds to the degree of relative markedness predicted by NPAH, that is, SU> DO> OPREP> GEN> OCOMP. (> means more accessible and less marked than); among which native language transfer is the most influential reason. And partly supported the difficult order predicted by MDH propounded by Eckman.3. Different positions of subordinate clause (Right-embedding vs. Center-embedding position) within the main clause influence the learning difficulty of RCs types differently. That is, Center-embedding position is more difficult than the Right-embedding position. This phenomenon also proved the predictive power of markedness and psychotypology.4. Avoidance is a common phenomenon in Chinese students' English Relative Clause use. The most frequently avoided relative clause types are OCOMP, OPREP. The major reason for avoidance can be traced to the linguistic large difference between Chinese and English Structure and learners'perceptions of the large distance between Chinese-English RC structures. |
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