Research On Pseudo Passives In Chinese-English Interlanguage

In accordance with the language typology classification of Li and Thompson(1976), Chinese and English belong to different language typology respectively.Chinese is the topic-prominent language, in which topic-comment is the basiccanonical sentence structure. However, English belongs to the subject-prominentlanguage, in which subject-predicate plays a major part in the English sentence.Topic-prominence and subject-prominence are the commonly used parameters inthe research of Chinese-English interlanguage and language transfer from the point oflanguage typology. Within the framework of interlanguage theory, researches ontopic-prominence and subject-prominence have been widely conducted. However, theprevious researches are only confined to the analysis of interlanguage in the macrolevel. In view of this, the influence of native language typology on interlanguageneeds to be further explored. In the empirical research, there is little comprehensiveresearch on single interlanguage feature, especially the research on thepseudo-passives construction produced by the Chinese learners of English. In light ofthis situation, based on the previous research, this study focuses on the research ofpseudo-passives construction produced by the Chinese learners of English to explorethe developmental pattern of Chinese-English interlanguage.This research is done with the help of the SPSS software. The Test consists oftwo groups of Chinese to English translation. Each group includes ten Chinesesentences and the sentence structures in two tasks are different. Task1includes10Chinese topic-comment sentences with null subject and Task2includes10Chinesetopic-comment sentences with subject. The questionnaire design is expected toexamine the usage of the topic-prominent structures in the course of translating thesentences with different structures. In this research, there are90Chinese learners ofEnglish to participate in the experiment. The90participants represent the low proficiency level, intermediate proficiency level, and high proficiency levelrespectively and each proficiency level consists of30participants. This research paysspecial attention to the PP constructions produced by the three groups of participantsin the translation tasks to explore the development rule of the Chinese-Englishinterlangauge topic-prominent structures in the acquisition of English syntax by theChinese learners.With the help of SPSS software, One-Way ANOVA analysis and Paired SamplesTest, the statistical results are obtained. According to the One-Way ANOVA analysis,it reveals that there exists a significant difference on the PP construction produced byparticipants of three different proficiency levels. The participants at the highproficiency level produced PP the least, then the intermediate level, and theparticipants at the low level produced the most. That is to say, influenced by thenative language greatly, the learners at the low proficiency level produced most PPamong which the topic-prominent features take a dominant part. However, as theincrease of the proficiency level and syntactization, the topic-prominent structuresdecrease but the subject-prominent structures increase. Meanwhile, the PairedSamples Test shows that the Chinese sentence structure exerts an influence on the PPproduction. For the participants at three proficiency levels, Task1is more likely toinduce them to produce the PP than Task2. It is shown that influenced by the nativelanguage typological transfer, PP is the result of transfer of the Chinesetopic-comment structures with null subject for Chinese learners of English. Finally,the initial NP in PP is a hybrid with features of both topic and subject.Based on the analysis on the interlanguage PP constructions produced byparticipants of three proficiency levels, this research also explores the causes of PPproduction: the native language typological transfer, L1-Thinking for L2-Speaking,differences between Chinese and English sentence structure etc. Therefore, in L2English teaching, the EFL teachers should emphasize the explanation on the languagedifference between Chinese and English, introduce more western cultures andcultivate the students’ English thinking patterns to guide students to better learnEnglish. Certainly, due to the limit of time and personal knowledge, this research contains some limitations. The researchers can improve this study in the future. Withlongitudinal research methodology, the future research can be conducted from theperspective of discourse to better explore the developmental characteristics ofInterlanguage.