The Acquisition Of English Prepositions By Non-english Major College Students From The Typological Perspective

Preposition falls within the category of function word in grammar.Regardless of its limited number,preposition plays an important role in terms of syntax.Compared to Chinese,English prepositions are abundant,and their number and frequency of use far exceed those of Chinese.The number of Chinese prepositions is relatively small.Due to the lack of morphological changes,Chinese tend to use verbs where prepositions or non-finite verbs are used in English.Therefore,it is worth investigating the impact of typological differences between English and Chinese on the acquisition of English prepositions by Chinese EFL learners.Previous studies on the acquisition of second language(L2)prepositions mainly focus on two themes: one is the acquisition of multiple meanings of prepositions.These studies mainly examined the differences in acquiring the core meaning and metaphorical meaning of second language prepositions;The other is the role of first language(L1)transfer in the acquisition of second language prepositions.These studies mainly investigated the influence of learners’ psychological factors on the acquisition of second language prepositions from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Undoubtedly,Metaphor Theory,Image Schema Theory,Prototype Polysemy Theory and Conceptual Transfer Theory all provide new visions and dimensions.However,since cognitive linguistics has been taken as the dominant theoretical perspective,other theoretical perspectives have been neglected.What’s more,most previous studies attached importance to the exploration of L2 learners’ production of English prepositions,but learners’ comprehension of English prepositions were not given due attention.Taking the typological perspective,this research intends to examine the acquisition of receptive knowledge and productive knowledge of English prepositions by Chinese students,gain insights into the overall situation of Chinese students’ English preposition acquisition,and reveal the influences of the typological differences between English and Chinese on English preposition acquisition.The data collection method in this study is translation,including the English-Chinese translation and Chinese-English translation tasks.The English-Chinese translation task aims to examine the learner’s acquisition of receptive knowledge of English prepositions;while the Chinese-English translation task aims to examine the learner’s acquisition of productive knowledge of English prepositions.It is hoped that this research can make up some deficiencies in the existing studies based on cognitive linguistics.This study mainly answers the following three questions:(1)What are the characteristics of acquisition of English prepositions in terms of receptive knowledge by non-English major college students?(2)What are the characteristics of acquisition of English prepositions in terms of productive knowledge by non-English major college students?(3)What are the influences of typological differences between Chinese and English on non-English major college students’ acquisition of English prepositions?The major findings of the study are as follows:Firstly,in the process of English-Chinese translation,by adopting different methods such as translating English prepositions into corresponding Chinese prepositions,omitting English prepositions,and converting parts of speech(especially verbalization),non-English majors college students are able to make the translated Chinese discourse smooth,correct,and complete.What’s more,the translated discourse conforms to the idiomatic rules in Chinese.This shows that although there are typological differences between English and Chinese,learners can still acquire receptive knowledge of English prepositions very well.Secondly,in the process of Chinese-English translation,compared with the original English text of the translated materials,a large number of English prepositions are omitted and misused in the non-English majors’ translation,and the use of prepositions is significantly less than that of native English speakers.The reason is probably that English prepositions are indispensable in most cases,and the frequency and active level of Chinese prepositions are much lower than that of English.This shows that learners’ acquisition of English prepositions in terms of productive knowledge is barely satisfactory and falls far behind that of their receptive knowledge.Thirdly,on the whole,the typological differences between Chinese and English have no significant impact on Chinese learners’ understanding of L2 prepositions but have a significant effect on Chinese EFL learners’ output of L2 prepositions.It shows that the transfer influences caused by the typological differences between mother tongue and target language on Chinese EFL learners’ of L2 preposition acquisition in terms of comprehension and production are asymmetrical.The reason for this asymmetry may be that second language production is affected by more factors and more difficult than second language comprehension.The results of this research may provide some enlightenment for English preposition teaching and English learning.First of all,teachers should pay attention to the typological differences between English and Chinese,emphasize the comparison of prepositional systems in English and Chinese and explain in detail the respective type characteristics of prepositions of English and Chinese,which will help learners overcome L1 transfer and reduce the occurrence of Chinglish.Next,since the influences of typological differences between Chinese and English on Chinese EFL learners’ of L2 preposition acquisition in terms of comprehension and production are asymmetrical,with the influence on the latter significantly greater than that on the former,teachers should attach more importance to the of students’ L2 production ability.Thirdly,because English and Chinese are not fully corresponding in terms of prepositions,teachers should strengthen the explanation of the semantic network of English prepositions and pay attention to the comparison of the core meaning and marginal meaning of prepositions,which can help students acquire the marginal meaning of prepositions and avoid the prototype effect in the acquisition of second language prepositions.