A Corpus-based Study On Conceptual Transfer Of Chinese Beginners’ English Spatial Prepositions

Language transfer is an important topic attracting much attention in the field of second language acquisition. Under the influence of cognitive linguistics, Pavlenko(1998) proposed the notion, conceptual transfer, which means studies on language transfer no longer just stay on the surface level of language but focus on digging into the different and similar conceptual systems between language learners and native English speakers, and it becomes a new orientation of language transfer studies. Conceptual transfer occurs in many aspects of learners’ language or interlanguage, such as vocabulary, syntax, pragmatics and so on. In the process of English learning, since there are differences between Chinese and English spatial categorizations, it is confusing for Chinese students to learn English spatial prepositions. A number of scholars have done comparative studies on English prepositions, most of which are about the usages of Chinese and English prepositions and the contrastive analyses on the surface structure. However, few researchers explore language transfer in prepositions from a deeper level.This paper analyzes Chinese students’ use of English spatial prepositions and expounds the reasons from a conceptual transfer perspective. Firstly, the thesis reviews the definition and the development of language transfer. Based on the review, it introduces conceptual transfer and points out the importance of conceptual transfer study in second language learning. And then, the methodology framework of this thesis is developed in line with linguistic relativity of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and categorization theory in cognitive linguistics. Based on the sub-corpus of the International Corpus of Cross-linguistic Interlanguage(ICCI), this research applies qualitative and quantitative methods, which chooses spatial prepositions used in high frequency, in and on, in order to exemplify the point, and compares the use of in and on of Chinese students with the corpus of English native speakers, Brown, and the modern Chinese in the corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics(CCL), in order to check whether Chinese beginners’ use of English spatial prepositions is consistent with English rules and influenced by Chinese.There are three main research questions discussed, including whether conceptual transfer exists in Chinese learners’ use of English spatial prepositions, the systematic features of conceptual transfer including positive and negative transfer, and the reasons why conceptual transfer occurs. The results show that conceptual transfer happens systematically and regularly in their use of English spatial prepositions. In language learning, conceptual positive and negative transfer originate from the similarities and differences between languages in terms of categorization. When there are differences in conceptual classification between different languages, if Chinese spatial conceptual categorization is smaller than English one, conceptual positive transfer tends to occur in learning English spatial prepositions, otherwise, if Chinese spatial conceptual categorization is larger than English range, then errors are likely to happen, which is conceptual negative transfer. Moreover, it is more likely that negative transfer occurs in the acquisition of the peripheral members in the same category.This research aims to enrich the studies of language transfer by analyzing conceptual transfer in Chinese students’ use of spatial prepositions. The findings can help teachers better understand students’ learning difficulties, especially in students’ learning English prepositions so that they can give students effective instructions. Moreover, this paper emphasizes that English teachers should hold a rational attitude to conceptual transfer and take it into consideration in English teaching.