The Mapping Mechanism Of Chinese English Learners’ Overuse Of English Modals

English modal verbs, a major component of English grammar, are seen as theleading way to express English modality. Although English modal verbs do not havelots of forms and the quantity is limited, their meanings and usages are quite complex.Many Chinese learners of English have different kinds of problems on the acquisitionand using of English modal verbs.The literature shows that a large number of experts and scholars at home andabroad have done extensive and in-depth research on the using of English modalverbs by Chinese learners of English via comparing and contrasting between Chinesestudents and English native speakers the frequency and habits of using English modalverbs. They all found that Chinese learners tend to overuse certain modal verbs, Canbeing the most prominent, and underuse some other, for example, Could. However,most of the studies present the phenomenon, but few analyses about the causes of this.In light of this, from the perspective of mental space mapping, the present studyproposes the overmapping and the undermapping hypotheses to explain the causestheoretically, and carries out an empirical study to justify the explanation, hoping thatit could be enlightening and meaningful to the teaching and acquisition of Englishmodal verbs, and even the English teaching in China.The study adopts quantitative research method in the form of a test of ChineseEnglish learners’ use of modal verbs Can and Could. The study result shows that thereis an overmapping of Can and undermapping of Could by the60participants, whichsuccessfully confirms the hypotheses and answers the questions that this thesis is toexplore.The findings of the study indicate that:(1) Chinese English learners haveindeed overmapped the meanings of Can to its linguistic form, and the meaning“ability” is the most overmapped and overused type.(2) There is an undermapping ofthe meanings and usages of Could among Chinese English learners, and theundermapping degrees of each type of meanings and usages are approximately the same with Could used for euphemism the most undermapped and underused. Thus aconclusion can be drawn that the overuse and underuse of modal verbs by ChineseEnglish learners is because their meanings and usages are overmapped orundermapped to the modal verbs in the process of using English.The present study is a unique attempt to analyze the reasons for the overuse andunderuse of English modal verbs by Chinese English learners from the point ofmental space mapping; it is significantly meaningful for the teaching and acquisitionof English modal verbs in China.