A Study Of Word Order Errors In The Acquisition Of Chinese Prepositional Phrases

This thesis mainly focuses on the interlanguage analysis of word order error in prepositional phrase. Based on the interlanguage resources, we studied the word order error in prepositional phrases indicates time/location/partner/instruments, and the samples comes from the interlanguage of students from level A/B/C, with their first language in Japanese/Korean/English/French/Russian/Portuguese/German/Thai. With the findings in universals of human language and the sample analysis on the error and error rate comparisons, we are able to find how the students’first language influences on their word order error of prepositional phrases. And we also research on the difference of error rate between the four kinds of prepositional phrases and how the error changes with the students’rising Chinese language level.The thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter one is an introduction of purpose and significants of my study, the scope of the objects, the reseach methods and approach we adopted and the interlanguage resources we use.Chapter two is an overview of the related studies. We briefed the previous studies in word order and classification of Chinese prepositional phrases, as well as word order of prepositional phrases in second language accqusition. We mainly focuses on the word order of preposition phrase in different languages, and summaried it into a chart according to the finding from universals of human laguague studies and therefore forcast the errors of students from different first languages.Chapter three is our own reseach on the word order errors of prepositional phrases in interlanguages. First, we introduce the basic information about the interlanguage resources and word order errors. Second, we compare the word order error rate between students from different first language background and analysis them individually. Third, we analysis the word error changes with different levels, and the influence of different kinds of prepositional phrases and different first language background. Last, we analysis the prepositional phrase with "zai" individually.Chapter four is the conclusion of the main findings and results of this research and inadequacies as well.