Experimental Study On The Syntactic Priming Effect Of Ba And Double-object Sentences In Middle-level Chinese Language Learners

The transformation between synonymous syntactic structures is a completely automatic process for native Chinese speakers.However,for the people who study Chinese as a second language,it is comparably much more difficult.Therefore,it is required to make a concrete analysis basing on the producing situation of synonymous syntactic structures to ameliorate teaching effectiveness.Syntactic priming is one of the important language phenomena and it also can be employed to observe syntax production.The research of syntactic priming has much more significance for advancing language producing and understanding,as well as second language teaching and acquiring.In my thesis,I have introduced the research status of syntactic priming and explained the mental mechanism and significance systematically.I have analyzed their researches' conclusions thoroughly.The basic logic of priming research and several frequently-used tasks are also introduced in the article.Moreover,I have illustrated the semantic features of Ba-sentences and double-object sentences well as the current situation of teaching and learning on them.Based on the existing results from previous theory studies,we carried out an experimental study on middle-level Chinese language learners' syntactic priming effect to develop the teaching methods of Ba-sentence and DO sentences.We regarded the middle-level Chinese language learners from School of International Education in Anhui University as experimental subjects and divided them into two groups.And the two groups had different experimental tasks,a without-picture task and a with-picture task respectively.The experiment process is to inspect the priming effect of Ba and DO sentences.Then I analyzed the results through SPSS software statistically.Thereafter,experimental subjects were surveyed by interviews.Finally,we have drawn several conclusions as following:Firstly,there exist syntactic priming effects of those two syntactic structures for middle-level Chinese learners,which indicates that the learners can produce the sentences that have the same structure with the priming sentences.Secondly,adding pictures has a positive impact on enhancing syntactic priming effect according to the significant increased amount in the with-picture task.Thirdly,Ba-sentencesare more sensitive to intuitive teaching materials than DO sentences.From Two-Way ANOVA result,it could be clearly seen that the group main effect is significant and the interaction effect between group and priming condition is also significant,which suggested that the priming effect of Ba-sentencesbecomes much stronger with the addition of pictures.From the conclusions drawn above,we also obtained some inspiration about Chinese language teaching and textbook compiling.My thesis contains five chapters:The first chapter includes the aim,the significance and methodology of the research.In the second chapter,I have discussed the current situation of priming research and the basic logic and the frequently-used tasks of priming.Then I have discussed the semantic features and acquisition situation of Ba and DO sentences and summarized former investigators'contribution.In the third chapter,the process of experimental research is included.According to the scores in pre-test,24 learners were randomly selected from middle-level class as the experimental subjects and subjected to do respectively without-picture task and with-picture task.The data was analyzed by SPSS software,using Paired-Samples T Test,Two-Way ANOVA and MANOVA.I also conducted survey interview following each task.In this chapter,the reasons of biased error are also deeply explored through VP shell,predicate movement and percolation principle.I also discussed them in functional hierarchies similarities and linguistic inventory differences.Finally,I explained the reasons of experimental results and summarized the theoretical significance of the research.In The fourth chapter,I discussed the inspiration about Chinese language teaching and textbook compiling.We should apply priming theory on class teaching,paying attention to language comparison and making teaching plans in a specific manor.Besides,intuitive teaching materials should pay an important role in teaching and textbook compiling.The last chapter is an overall discussion,which summarizes the conclusions I have drawn in my thesis and points out innovative parts of this thesis.It also introduces the future directions for the studies on syntactic priming research.