The Acquisition Of English Negative Structures By Chinese Learners

The present study, within the framework of Minimalist Program, aims to test theaccessibility of Universal Grammar from the perspectives of X-bar Theory and StrictCyclicity Principle by exploring the features of the Chinese learners’ use of Englishnegative structures with the method of quantitative analysis in order to emphasize theimportance of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition.It is a hot issue to debate whether the principles of Universal Grammar are accessiblein second language acquisition during the past three decades. So far there are three mainperspectives, full access, no access and partial access. The controversial problems aremainly connected to the accessibility and the extent to which Universal Grammar isavailable in second language acquisition. According to the framework of MinimalistProgram, there are two principles that Chinese English learners must follow, namely, X-barTheory and Strict Cyclicity Principle, which are also two constraints on the syntacticoperations of the English negative structures. According to it, this thesis presents anempirical study. All the participants are divided into four groups called A, B, C and D,separately standing for the students of advanced level, intermediate level and low level.For Group A, Group B and Group C, each group is made up of20Chinese Englishstudents of whom each one is asked to have a grammaticality judgment task and atranslation task. Group D, as a control group, consists of26English native speakers ofwhom each one is acquired to have a grammaticality judgment task. It shows that thecopula is emerges in the initial state in the abbreviated form’s. However, there is nofeatures-checking between the copula is and a negator. Moreover, there are no significantdifferences between Chinese advanced-level English learners and English native speakers.Based on an in-depth discussion, the conclusions are drawn as follows. Firstly, duringthe initial state of English negative structures acquisition for Chinese learners, thefunctional categories are not acquired even though the copula be appears, in that itconfirms that the inflectional features are valueless and thus, Chinese learners only acquire lexical categories, which proves the Valueless Features Hypothesis. The functionalcategories may be transferred from the first language. Secondly, Chinese English learnersare sensitive to reject both X-bar Theory and Strict Cyclicity Principle violations in thenegative structures acquisition. Thirdly, Chinese learners are more inclined to reject theX-bar Theory violations than to reject Strict Cyclicity Principle violations, which meansthat Chinese learners lead different accessibility to the principles of Universal Grammar.Finally, some suggestions for Chinese teaching and further research of the English negativestructures are provided in this thesis.