Structural Priming Effects In The Production Of Stranded Prepositions By Chinese Learners Of English

Within the concept of competition and activation in the MOGUL framework and the model of verb's syntactic representation,this study explores and discusses the structural priming effects in the production of stranded prepositions in English relative clauses(stranded prepositions for short in the following)by Chinese learners of English.An oral sentence completion task is carried on 80 English major students(40 advanced learners and 40 intermediate learners)in a University who are selected from 100 students through the Oxford Quick Placement Test and meet the criterion.Then a statistical analysis is made on the data collected based on SPSS22.0 software.The results indicate that firstly,the production of stranded prepositions by participants in different language proficiency remains at the base line in the pretest and increases significantly in the priming test and the post-test.Secondly,all participants produce null preps in the pretest and the advanced group reduces the production of null preposition structures(null preps for short in the following)in the priming test and post-test sharply while the intermediate group doesn't.Thirdly,language proficiency has an impact on the structural priming effects in second language production.Specifically,the explanations are given to the structural priming effect in second language production by Chinese learners of English from the view of competition and activation in the MOGUL framework and the model of verb's syntactic representation.After processing a prime sentence,the NP,VP and PP items in the database are activated and selected into the constructed syntactic representation.The syntactic representation of relative clauses(RC)comes up to a high level of activation.Also,the higher the level is,the easier the items are selected.Learners tend to speak the structure of previously experienced sentences in subsequently produced sentences.From the view of the model of verb's syntactic representation,the study explains the structural priming effect in the production of stranded prepositions by English L2 learners,indicating that advanced learners are more sensitive to the priming of stranded prepositions.The model of verb's syntactic representation argues that the entry level contains nodes of representing combinatory information and the intensity of the associated node is positively related to the language proficiency.The higher the language proficiency is,the greater the intensity is.Then the items are more easily to be activated by the advanced learners after a similar syntactic structure being processed.In addition,within the interlanguage theory,the study explains the production of null preps.According to the Markedness Differential Hypothesis,wh-movement Parameter Resetting Theory and L1 transfer,the study analyses the performance of pronoun retention in the production of other structures.Also,the study tries to discuss the priming performance of the verb “use” within the Accessing Mechanism of Chinese-English Bilinguals.The study begins with the production of three target structures: stranded prepositions,null preps and other structures,and then gives explanations for the results and findings.It is helpful to reveal the learners' inner language acquisition process on one side and on the other side provide suggestions for English learning and teaching.