A Study On The Chinese Lexical Attrition Of Advanced English Learners In China

This study explores whether the Chinese lexicons of advanced English learnersare attrited or not. English major postgraduates in Ningbo University as anexperimental group participate in the study and non-English major college freshmenserve as a control group for Chinese data. The background information of theseparticipants is elicited through a questionnaire. Chinese data in two groups are elicitedthrough a written story-retelling task after participants watching a sequence of thesilent movie Tom and Jerry which lasts8minutes. The Chinese lexical richness ofthese participants is investigated from perspectives of lexical diversity, lexicalsophistication, lexical density and lexical errors by using ICTCLAS, AntConc andSPSS, and whether the Chinese lexicons are attrited or not through comparingwhether there is a significant difference between these two groups in the lexicalrichness, which is measured by independent sample t-test.The results demonstrate that, comparing with the control group, there is not asignificant decrease in lexical diversity, lexical sophistication and lexical densityrespectively, but a significant increase in lexical errors of the experimental group. Thefindings accord with neither those of previous research nor the prediction of this studycompletely. Finally, the results are analyzed from five perspectives: typologicaldifferences between Chinese and English, age, language proficiency, language use,and the invisibility of lexical attrition. Firstly, in term of language type, there are fewconditions for language restructuring or language convergence, because Chinese andEnglish belong to different language systems, and English lexical items must beadapted to have the characteristics of Chinese writing or pronunciation when they areborrowed into Chinese system, so lexical borrowing does not pose a threat to Chinese vocabulary. Secondly, the onset time of learning English for advanced participants ispost-puberty when the development of their mother tongue system is relatively perfectso that it is not susceptible to interference from foreign language systems. Thirdly, theChinese proficiency of advanced English learners has reached the threshold level.Besides, the learners still keep intensive contact with Chinese in daily life, and thequality of Chinese exposure is better than that of English contact, which may lead tothe maintenance of Chinese vocabulary. Finally, from the texts collected in thestory-retelling task, more code-switchings, lexical errors and overt subjects occur inthe texts of advanced English learners than those of the control group, which may bethe first sign of lexical attrition. In other words, the process of lexical attrition isgradual and not evident at the first time.