L2Acquisition Of English Middle Construction By Chinese Learners Of English

As a special kind of Construction Grammar, the study of English Middle Construction which begins from Keyser&Roeper has attracted a lot of attention in linguistic field because of its complex interaction between syntax and semantics. Because of the significance and the senior students’inability to master EMC, the topic of EMC is chosen. The central feature of the English Middle Construction is that it is in active form syntactically and has a passive interpretation semantically.This thesis begins with the introduction to the Construction Grammar. At first, Construction Grammar is analyzed from various perspectives according to different theorists. Among them, Goldberg is the most influential scholar whose definition is the most popular one. Second, motivations of Construction Grammar are put forward and a lot of perspectives are given such as generative, constructional, functional and cognitive ones. Then four properties of Construction Grammar are put forward. In the next part, English Middle Construction is analyzed including its properties, restrictions and categories. Its properties including syntactic and semantic features are analyzed. Syntactically, sentences of English Middle Construction always come with an adverbial. The verbs are usually in active form and use simple present tense. Semantically, it has the properties of genericity, modality and agentivity. However, there are also some restrictions on verbs and English Middle Construction. The restrictions on English Middle Construction, verbs and adjuncts and categories are elaborated on. First, EMC only applies to a restricted set of verbs. In other words, middles are not applied to all the verbs. Second, the middles also have restrictions on adjuncts. Thus English Middle Construction is so complicated that Chinese EFL learners especially Chinese senior high school students find it difficult to learn. However, there is no research into the acquisition of EMC of senior high school students. The thesis does a research to investigate Chinese senior students’acquisition of English Middle Construction.There are90subjects. They stand for:beginning (Low), intermediate (Inter) and advanced (Adv). The tool the study uses is questionnaire. This thesis attempts to investigate the following questions:1. Will different kinds of English Middle Construction cause learners different degrees of learning difficulty?2. Will learners’ knowledge of English Middle Construction increase as their linguistic proficiency improves?3. Would Chinese learners distinguish the verbs that can or cannot be adopted in English Middle Construction?The result of the study shows that different kinds of English Middle Constructions will cause learners different learning difficulty. Learners’knowledge of EMC will increase as their linguistic proficiency improves. It is difficult for learners to distinguish middle verbs from non-middle verbs.From the study it is easy to draw a conclusion that language transfer, complexity of syntax and cognition all influence the learners’ acquisition. And pedagogic implications are listed as follows. At first, it is suggested that the teachers should keep on explaining some easy semantic and syntactic features with selection and repetition based on some typical errors in teaching. Undoubtedly, this will contribute to the mastery of target construction. Furthermore, teachers should put more time and energy on the cultivation of students’ practical usage of language. Teachers can provide more suitable language environment about English Middle Construction for students through exposing them more to language material of target construction to help them master the construction well.