A Subject-object Asymmetry In The Acquisition Of Relative Clauses By English Majors In China

The present study carries a corpus-based research to investigate the acquisitionof English Relative Clauses (RCs) by Chinese college students of different languageproficiency levels in Chinese context, based on relevant hypotheses. The researchfocuses are the subject-object asymmetry in students’ RC processing, the avoidancestrategy they take, the RC acquisition order of the four basic types, the correlationbetween Chinese students’ language proficiency and their RC acquisition, and theerror types and possible causes.The data involved are taken from two sub-corpora of the Spoken and WrittenEnglish Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL2.0). One thousand and eightysentences involving RCs are collected from students’ timed test writings in the twosub-corpora of freshmen and juniors representing students of low-level and high-levellanguage proficiency respectively, and then classified into various groups—SubjectRCs, Object RCs and other types in one category; SS type, OS type, SO type, OOtype in the other category. By way of quantitative and qualitative research methods,the data analysis generates findings as follows:1)Chinese English majors did take avoidance strategy when processing RCs represented by the underproduction of RCs and the preference for Subjectand Object RCs to other types.2)The production frequency of RCs indicates that Subject RCs are morefrequently produced than Object RCs by Chinese EFL learners, while theaccuracy shows that Object RCs are easier to acquire than Subject RCs forstudents involved.3)The acquisition order of the four basic types of RCs is summarized asSO>OO>SS>OS (“>” means “is easier than”). With the matrix positionconcerned, the study finds that the center-embedded English RCs are easierto process than the right-embedded English RCs, which indicates that thatthe information flow factor plays an important role in Chinese students’processing of RCs.4)The improvement of learners’ proficiency level does exert a positiveinfluence on their acquisition of RCs: the higher level they are of, the morecorrect RCs they produce.5)Errors made by Chinese students involved are classified into ten types withthe incorrect use of relative pronoun, the wrong agreement, impropercollocation, misused tense, misuse of definite clause with indefinite clauseas the most influential ones. For the causes of those errors, Chinesestudents’ lack of knowledge about RC, and the negative transfer ofstudents’ mother language should all be taken into consideration.The present study is expected to provide some insights into Chinese students’RC acquisition, to offer instructive suggestions to teachers and students of ESL, andto improve students’ performance on RC processing.