A Corpus-based Study Of English Prepositional Errors By Chinese Learners:From A Conceptual Transfer Perspective

Language transfer has always been one of the most attracting areas in the study of second language acquisition.The studies of language transfer can be roughly divided into three important stages,namely,Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis,Nativist Approaches and Conceptual Transfer Hypothesis.Conceptual Transfer Hypothesis was applied into L2 acquisition studies in the 1990 s influenced by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – Weak Hypothesis which means language influences mind.Recently conceptual Transfer Hypothesis has been applied in the studies of Chinese learners of English in China.The studies show that in the process of learning English,the usage of prepositions is always troubling Chinese English learners,and it is believed that the trouble is largely caused by the differences of the Chinese and English language concept category systems.Based upon the related literature and references published home and abroad,the author has found that there are only a few studies of errors committed by Chinese learners of English in terms of uses of prepositions from a Conceptual Transfer perspective.Several such studies analyze frequently-used prepositions such as in,on and at,but studies of less frequently-used ones such as except,besides and against are rare if there any in the current research literature.Therefore,this study intends to identify prepositional errors committed in the English writings of Chinese Learners of English and explore the underlying causes of conceptual transfer in the prepositional errors based on “English learning Conceptual Transfer Theoretical framework”.After both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data from the CLEC Corpus,I find:(1)systematic and regular prepositional errors indeed occur in Chinese English learners' writing and Chinese language negative conceptual transfer phenomena is also found(2)The conceptual transfer was caused by the mutual influence of the two language conceptual category systems manifested at both lexical and grammatical level.Based on the findings,this study has the following implications:(1)Chinese English teacher should emphasize on the differences between two languages' conceptual category system to the students.(2)Chinese English learners should spend time reading the native English essays as well as pay more attention to the differences between two culture's mode of thinking.