The Acquisition Of Expletive It By Chinese Learners Of English

Under the theoretical framework of generative grammar,this paper investigates the acquisition of expletive it in four contexts by conducting a Chinese-English translation task to 110 Chinese students,in three different levels of English proficiency.The whole research draws on the experiences of the study from Elena(2015)on the acquisition of expletive it in Russian students acquiring English.All the data we get from the task is processed and analyzed by EXCEL and SPSS 20.0 version.The results indicate that there is an apparent difference in learning of expletive it in four different contexts.To be more specific,Chinese students have much more difficulty in learning of expletive it in the distance and environment contexts than that in the weather and time contexts(M Time> M Weather > M Distance > M Environment).Secondly,significant difference is also found among three groups in learning of expletive it.The elementary learners have worse performance on the acquisition of expletive it.They are inclined to omit expletive it in English sentences.However,with the improvement of English proficiency,learners gradually realize that null subjects are ungrammatical in English,expletive it is not allowed to omit.The correct rate of advanced learners in learning of expletive it is much higher than that of elementary and intermediate learners(M Advanced > M Intermediate > M Elementary).Thirdly,compared with expletive it in embedded sentences,Chinese students are more successful in learning of expletive it in matrix sentences(M MS > M ES).All the results mentioned above prove that UG is still accessible in SLA and second language learners can ultimately succeed in resetting the null-subject parameter.Lastly,errors made by Chinese learners in the translation task are not restricted to the omission of expletive it,L1 literal translation and expletive there overuse are also included.We suggest that the strong or weak uninterpretable features in English and Chinese lead to Chinese learners' worst performance on expletive it in the beginning.They are apt to omit expletive it.With respect to the better performance on expletive it in matrix sentences,this paper gives some possible explanations from three different perspectives,that is,syntactic hierarchies,syntactic complexity and cognitive salience.It's proposed that the syntactic structure of a matrix sentence is much simpler.Because of higher syntactic level,information in matrix sentences is salient,capturing learners' more attention and thus they have less difficulty in learning of expletive it in matrix sentences than that in embedded sentences.Furthermore,from the perspectives of input frequency,activation frequency and activation level,this paper talks about learners' better performance on expletive it in the time and weather contexts than that in the distance and environment contexts.We argue that the input frequency of expletive it in the weather and time contexts is much higher,so Chinese students have more opportunities to process these two items.The more active an item is,the more available it is for extraction and use.As to why Chinese learners tend to make literal translation of the structures from Chinese to English,in other words,transfer Chinese topic constructions into L2 English syntax,we make an illustration under the theoretical framework of the Subset Principle.Chinese topic constructions are a superset of English topic constructions.Some topic constructions which are grammatical in Chinese are ungrammatical in English.It will be extremely hard for L2 learners to extricate themselves from the effect of Chinese topic constructions,because there is no negative evidence to prove which topic constructions are ungrammatical in English.In addition,as for expletive there overuse,we make an analysis on the differences of syntactic derivation between expletive it and expletive there.On one hand,this paper shows us learners' second language acquisition process by doing a research about the learning of expletive it in L2 English syntax by Chinese students as well as the difference in learning of expletive it in four contexts.On the other hand,by making an in-depth analysis of reasons which may result in the difference of acquisition and distribution,it provides some targeted advice for English teaching in China,which helps Chinese students to have a deeper understanding of expletive it and promotes L2 acquisition in turn.