A Study Of L2 Conceptual Influence Upon L1:Evidence From The Expressions Of Motion Events In Chinese

Recently,there is an increasing interest in the influence of L2 upon L1 in linguistic research.The influence of L2 upon L1 in phonology,pragmatics,lexicon and semantics,and morphosyntax has been proved by the scholars both at home and abroad.However,L2 conceptual influence upon L1 is unsettled and still asks for further verification.This study aims at investigating the influence of English upon Chinese EFL learners,narrations of motion events in Chinese with Chinese monolinguals as the control group.Based on the previous studies,the expressions of motion events including motion verbs,modifiers for manner and cause verbs,grammatical items,ground elaboration arid description of physical settings are dealt with in this study.Three research questions are then addressed:(1)is there any L2 conceptual influence upon L1 at lexical level?(2)Is there any L2 conceptual influence upon L1 at grammatical level?(3)Is there any L2 conceptual influence upon L1 at textual level?33 Chinese advanced EFL learners,31 Chinese low-level EFL learners and 30 Chinese monolinguals were recruited to provide elicited oral narration samples for this study.The results of this study show that:(1)the learning of L2 has conceptual influence on EFL learners at lexical level for they use fewer non-deictic path verbs separately,use more manner and cause verbs separately,and use more adverbs and other expressions to modify manner and cause verbs.And L2 conceptual influence upon L1 is positively correlated with the proficiency level of L2 for the higher proficiency level the EFL learners are at,the greater degree of conceptual influence will be found on them.(2)The learning of L2 has conceptual influence on EFL learners at grammatical level for EFL learners are more sensitive to the difference between[progressive+ present]activities and[perfective+ past]ones and the sensibility develops when the proficiency level of L2 increases.(3)The learning of L2 has conceptual influence on EFL learners at textual level for EFL learners express more ground information generally and the further stage of L2 learning they are at,the more ground information will be expressed.However,L2 conceptual influence upon L1 at textual level can be more limited,as compared with that at other levels for no significant increase is found with regard to the respective mentioning of ground information about source,medium or goal in EFL learners’ expressions and all the three groups are inclined to describe physical settings in a static manner to add more information to ground.