A Complex Network-based Research On The Emergence And Development Of Syntactic Network In Chinese EFL Learners’ Writings

The present study investigated the emergence and overall developmental process of L2 syntactic networks of Chinese EFL learners over nine years’ English learning from an emergent and dynamic language view by employing complex network methodology.The data of this study are 509 English compositions written by Chinese students across nine grades,from the grade four of the primary schools to the grade three of the senior high schools.After being faithfully keyboarded into the computer,all the writings of each grade are annotated with dependency grammar and complex networks are later constructed on the basis of dependency Treebanks for further analysis.Stanford Parser 3.6.0 and Pajek 2.05 are adopted for Treebank construction and network analysis,as well as SPSS 20.0 and Microsoft Excel 2010 for statistical analysis.The major findings are: 1)There is no emergence of syntactic network in L2 writings,in this case Chinese English learners.All the syntactic networks display the non-trivial scale-free and small-world network properties,which is different from what has been observed in L1 acquisition.It probably results from the similarity between the syntactic structures of Chinese and English.Children acquire L1 from scratch,which gives birth to the emergence of syntactic network,while L2 learners learn another language on the basis of an already extant syntactic system.2)The primary school students tend to rely heavily on their mother tongue for expressing ideas and involve frequent code-switching.The proportion of Chinese used in their compositions decreases significantly after one-year English learning.3)The development of L2 syntactic networks is dynamic and non-linear.Network statistical properties reveal a significant increase of lexical diversity in the first year of the junior high schools and the relatively lagging maturation of syntax in the third year of the junior high schools and the first year of the senior high schools.4)Copula be and function words such as articles and prepositions are important hubs in L2 learners’ immature syntactic networks.5)Even for advanced Chinese English learners（the senior high school students）,the L2 syntactic network is not as well-organized as English syntactic network of native speakers.6)The fluctuation or fossilization of syntactic capacity among the senior high school students is also observed by the topological methodology.7)By comparing network measures of native language,target language and Interlanguage,complex network method also verifies that Interlanguage displays properties which are unique to itself and occupies an independent status.