The Research On The Acquisition Of English Ditransitive Construction By Chinese L2Learners

This dissertation is to do an empirical research on the acquisition of English DitransitiveConstruction by Chinese L2learners from the perspective of syntax-semantics interface, in thelight of Interface Hypothesis proposed by Sorace (2006). This research aims to investigate thevalidity of Interface Hypothesis, i.e. whether the learners at different English levels can use thecorrect structure of Ditransitive Construction according to the different types of predicate verbs.The experimental design is on the basis of the similarities and divergences betweenChinese and English DOC sentences formed by the obtaining verbs, such as ‘bring’,‘steal’. Theparticipants are the Chinese L2learners at three different English levels. According to theInterface Hypothesis, two concrete hypotheses have been proposed for the experimentaloperation:(1) in the light of Interface Hypothesis, during the L2acquisition of EnglishDitransitive Construction, the syntactic structure can be completely acquired by Chinese L2learners, however, the content at the syntax-semantics interface is much harder to achieve thefull acquisition than the syntactic one;(2) even though the knowledge at the syntax-semanticsinterface is hard to be acquired completely, there are still divergences existing among differentexperimental groups at different developing stages, i.e. the higher proficiency the participantshave, the better level on the acquisition of syntax-semantics interface they will be. By collectingand analyzing the data, the experimental results provided a ground for the two hypotheses,which is the support for the target of this thesis.The dissertation consists of six parts. Chapter One mainly introduces the content of thisresearch, including the study background, the research significance and the research questions.Chapter Two presents the literature review as the foundation for the empirical research,containing the theoretical and experimental studies on the Ditransitive Construction and thesummary on the comparative analysis investigations between Chinese and English DCs.Chapter Three expounds the theoretical background of present study, especially the InterfaceHypothesis and the L2Initial State Hypothesis. Chapter Four and Chapter Five provide thedetailed statement on the current empirical study. Chapter Four mainly represents theinformation about the experiments, such as the research hypotheses, the participants, the materials, the methodologies and the original data from the tests. Chapter Five emphasizes onthe statistical analysis on the data, not only for the hypotheses’ verification, but also for theadditional findings. The last part of this thesis, Chapter Six does a conclusion on the wholeresearch experiment and provides some suggestions for future study.Through the interpretation of the six chapters, on the one hand, the present study hasproved the application of Interface Hypothesis at the syntax-semantics interface, i.e. during theL2acquisition process, the complete acquisition of syntactic structure is inevitable, but the fullysuccessful acquisition of syntax-semantics interface is tough; on the other hand, the study hasenriched the L2acquisition researches on the English Ditransitive Construction, the acquisitionof English Ditransitive Construction requires that the Chinese L2learners not only focus on thesyntactic form, but also pay attention to the semantic meaning, in particular, the divergencesbetween the predicate verbs which can enter into both Chinese and English DitransitiveConstructions respectively.