| The English verb-particle constructions alternation refers to the shift between two semantically similar constructions,namely the verb-particle-object constructions and the verb-object-particle constructions.Some construction grammarians tend to exclude alternation relationship from the inventory of linguistic units.But Cappelle integrates alternations into construction grammar.Cappelle(2006)points out that the semantic representations of the verb-particle-object constructions and the verb-object-particle constructions are the same.They are the two allostructions of the transitive verb-particle constructions,which are linked by a “supercategory”.The “supercategory” catches something they have in common,namely a shared direct object and particle,with the linear order of these components unspecified.Structural priming refers to the phenomenon that people tend to repeat the syntactic structures they have experienced or produced.Structural priming paradigm has been mainly applied to assess processing of active-passive constructions and dative constructions.A number of corpus-based studies on the English verb-particle constructions use have been conducted.Yet studies on structural priming in English verb-particle constructions have lagged behind,especially in the second language literature.A few people like Gries have carried out studies on factors influencing structural priming effects of English verb-particle constructions such as collostruction strength.Gries(2005)argues that the verbs strongly associated with one construction show priming with this construction much more strongly than with the other construction.In order to verify the view of Gries(2005)and explore the relationship between subjects' preference and structural priming effects of English verb-particle constructions,this study combines psychological experimental method and corpus-based approach to jointly describe and explain speakers' linguistic knowledge and behavior.Experimental data are usually obtained from researchers' manipulation of experiments,differing from learners' output in the authentic language context while data extracted from corpus is representative of natural and authentic language use.Therefore,within the allostruction model and usage-based construction grammar and structural priming related theories,this study explores and discusses the structural priming effects in the production of the verb-around constructions among a group of Chinese learners of English.This study makes an attempt to solve the following three research questions:1.Which kind of construction shows stronger collostruction strength with verbs such as change,turn,pass,hand,kick and flash—the verb-object-around construction or the verb-around-object construction?2.Which construction is produced more by second language learners in the baseline experiment—the verb-object-around construction or the verb-around-object construction? What are the reasons?3.What are the relationships between second language learners' inclination in the baseline experiment and priming results and between collostruction strength and priming results?In order to answer the above questions,we first collect data from COCA by retrieving and selecting all the qualified target constructions—the verb-around-object construction and the verb-object-around constructions.And R software is applied to carry out the distinctive collexeme analysis.Then a neutral baseline experiment and a structural priming experiment is carried on 37 juniors majoring in English in a university who have passed Test for English Majors-Band 4 via the sentence completion task.Prime sentences include two types of constructions,namely verb-particle-object construction and verb-object-particle construction.Then a statistical analysis is made on the data obtained from the experiments based on SPSS 23.0 software by McNemar's tests and a binary logistic regression analysis.The major research findings can be summarized as follows:(1)There are nine verb collexmes can appear in both the verb-around-object constructions and the verb-object-around constructions.The computing outcome of the collostruction strength reveals that verb collexeme pass shows the strongest collostruction strength with the verb-around-object construction,followed by bat,kick and hand while the verb turn shows the strongest collostruction strength with the verb-object-around construction,followed by change.And as for bandy,flash and knock,there is no significant association or attraction between them and the two constructions.Except bandy and knock,the raw frequencies of the rest seven verb collexemes in the verb-object-around construction are all higher than those of them in the verb-around-object construction.This finding also shows that raw frequencies of collexemes in English verb-particle constructions are not equivalent to their collostruction strengths.(2)The results of neutral baseline experiment show that the second language learners tend to produce more the verb-object-around construction than the verb-around-object construction,with the former construction appearing 138 times totally and the latter occurring 83 times.The reason is that there is limited effects of learners' first language and when the direct object is short,simple and gives definite information with low idiomaticity level,transitive verb-particle constructions tend to occur in the verb-object-particle constructions.Therefore,the present finding also supports the allostruction model,which suggests that the two verb-particle variants are the specific realized forms of the transitive verb-particle construction in different contexts.(3)In the structural priming experiment,McNemar's tests show that there are significant priming effects in the two allostructions of the “v + around” constructions.This finding also demonstrates that structural priming is a wide-ranging phenomenon,existing in different languages with different linguistic structures(Ferreria,Victor & Bock,2006,p.5).The strength of structural priming effects for the verb-around-object constructions is much stronger than it for the verb-object-around constructions.This finding is consistent with Pickering and Ferreira' “inverse-preference effects” argument(2008).This result presents evidence for second language learner's ability to predict and learn from errors(Chang,Dell & Bock,2006).And the implicit learning account can explain the occurrence of inverse-preference effects for the verb-around-object constructions by positing that learning is sensitive to the current state of knowledge,namely the poorly known construction undergoes greater learning.And the ACT-R model accounts for such effects through diminished learning for more frequent chunks.(4)The binary logistic regression model employed to analyze the influencing factors of structural priming shows that collostruction strength of the target constructions does not exert a significant effect on structural priming effects while the participants' inclination and construction type in prime sentences does.The fact that collostruction strength does not play a significant role in structural priming is not in accordance with Gries' s(2005)finding,which may result from the two studies' differences in materials,research methods and statistical analysis tools.This study incorporates corpus data in psychological design in order to explore the relationships between structural priming and collostruction strength as well as the second language learners' inclination.The above findings have both theoretical and practical implications.It enriches usage-based construction grammar and structural priming theories.It not only provides a new perspective for the analysis of verb-particle constructions but also helps to improve verb-particle constructions learning outcomes. |
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