Markedness Or Salience: An Emprical Research On The Acquisition Of Ps And Ppp By Chinese Learners Of English

This paper investigates the acquisition order of the markedconstruction preposition stranding and its unmarked counterpartpreposition pied piping by Chinese learners of English. The findingsshow that the marked form is acquired before the unmarked one, whichapparently goes against the order predicated by the markednesshypothesis and suggests that there is another important factor influencingthe acquisition order, which is perceptual salience. The present studyaccepts the idea proposed by Bardovi-Harlig that salience is the dataavailability of the language item. In addition, the present study alsoinvestigates other questions related to salience. For example, the functionof it in the output, whether salience will stop working when learners reacha certain advanced level of proficiency in L2.