Effects Of Language Transfer On Chinese Students’ Acquisition Of English Relative Clause

Language transfer has been a hot topic in the field of applied linguistics, secondlanguage acquisition as well as foreign language teaching. It frequently appeared inmore than one linguistic field, such as phonetics, morphology, syntax and semanticsetc. Relative clause, as a very important grammatical item, has been also a popularsubject among linguistic researchers in the past few decades. English relative clausesbring many difficulties for Chinese students’ acquisition due to their complexstructure and their huge difference between Chinese relative clauses. This thesisstudies Chinese students’ acquisition of English relative clause from the perspectiveof language transfer. It tries to explain the difficulties and the causes of suchdifficulties in the acquisition process in terms of language transfer theory. This paperaims to help to extend the application of language transfer theory and the empiricalpractice so that it can enrich the explanation of language transfer theory to Chinesestudents’ acquisition of English relative clause and provide some help for the teachingand learning of English relative clause.This thesis first discusses the definition of language transfer, the development oflanguage transfer as well as the classification of language transfer; then it introducesthe definition of relative clause, classification of relative clause, the differencebetween English relative clause and Chinese relative clause as well as the previousresearches on relative clause. In the early1970s, after the investigation on more thanfifty languages all over the world, Keenan&Comrie (1977:63-69) put forward NounPhrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH). They argue that there exists an accessibilityhierarchy as SU>DO>IO>OBL/OPREP>GEN>OCOMP according to functions thatthe head noun served in relative clause. The more complex the structure of the relativeclause, the greater the difficulty of acquisition will be. On the basis of Schatcher’sobservation, Chen Yuehong (1999) analyzed Chinese students’ avoidance in usingEnglish relative clause; Xiao Yunnan&Lü Jie (2005) verified three hypotheses on Chinese students’ learning English relative clause through empirical research; CaiJinting&Wu Yi’an’s (2006)“Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis and Acquisition ofEnglish Relative Clause”. Although the previous researches on relative clause are veryextensive, there are few researches on Chinese students’ learning English relativeclause from the perspective of language transfer.Based on the previous researches, the present research is an empirical study onthe sequence of Chinese students’ learning five types of English restrictive relativeclauses (SU, DO, GEN, OPREP, OCOMP). First, four research questions are raised:1)What are the sequences of Chinese students’ learning English RCs? Do the resultsconform to Keenan&Comrie’s Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy?2) What kindof errors do the Chinese students usually make? How does their native languageinfluence the learning process?3) Do the Chinese students have the tendency to avoidusing certain types of English RCs?4) Do the Chinese students with bettercommanding of English make fewer mistakes on English RCs? Based on the abovequestions, the following hypotheses which need to be verified are proposed:1) Sincethere exist differences between Chinese RCs and English RCs, Chinese students’learning English RCs must be affected by their native language. Then there must exista certain learning sequence on English RCs of different types. And the learningsequence will conform to Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy for Keenan&Comriedrew this conclusion after investigation on more than fifty languages all over theworld.2) The errors the Chinese students usually make depend on the degree thatnative language influences their learning. Language transfer will definitely occur andaccount for one of the most possible causes since there are differences betweenEnglish RCs and Chinese RCs. They probably produce English RCs with Chinesefeatures, where errors appear such as resumptive pronoun.3) The more complex ordifficult a certain type of English RCs is, the less Chinese students will use it to avoidmaking mistakes. Due to the complexity of English restrictive relative clauses (SU,DO, GEN, OPREP, OCOMP) and the difference between English relative clause andChinese relative clause, Chinese students must have the tendency to avoid usingcertain type(s) of English RCs.4) The Chinese students with different proficiency levels of English will definitely perform differently. The longer time they learnEnglish for, the more score they will obtain, and the less they will be influenced bylanguage transfer, the fewer mistakes they will make.To answer the above questions and verify the above hypotheses, the authordesigned two tests including sentence combination test and grammatical judgment test.The subjects are two groups with different English proficiency. The Group of LowerEnglish Proficiency Level (LG) are30freshmen from Economic School of JilinUniversity majoring in finance; the Group of Higher English Proficiency Level (HG)are28post graduates from School of Foreign Language Education of Jilin Universitymajoring in English. After the collection and analysis on the data through the two tests,the author came to the following conclusions:First, from the data of the sentence combination test, the sequence of Chinesestudents’ learning English RCs generated is “SU>DO>GEN>OPREP>OCOMP”.Since Keenan&Comrie’s Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy supports the sequence“SU>DO>OPREP>GEN>OCOMP”, on the whole the result of our research conformto NPAH except for the position of OPREP and GEN. Language transfer is the majorfactor influencing these special sequences while different subjects involved lead todifferent results. Second, influenced by negative transfer of L1, Chinese studentsusually make seven types of errors including resumptive pronoun, erroneous use ofrelative pronoun, omission of antecedents, non-adjacency, redundant relative clause,structural conversion and simplification. Third, Chinese students have the tendency toavoid using certain types of English RCs such as OPREP, OCOMP. Language transferis the fundamental reason for the avoidance phenomenon. Fourth, Chinese studentswith better commanding of English make fewer mistakes on English RCs.The study on Chinese students’ learning English relative clause has certainimplicational significance on English teaching and English learning. Influenced byobjective conditions as time limit and subjective constraints as lack of experience, thestudy is still inadequate. The improvement is expected in future research.