Acquisition of Causative Directed Manner of Motion by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese
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Acquisition of Causative Directed Manner of Motion by English-speaking Learners of Chinese Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Peng, Ke Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 27/09/2021 04:38:20 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/202949 ACQUISITION OF CAUSATIVE DIRECTED MANNER OF MOTION BY ENGLISH- SPEAKING LEARNERS OF CHINESE by Ke Peng _____________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the EAST ASIAN STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2011 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Ke Peng entitled Acquisition of Causative Directed Manner of Motion by English-speaking Learners of Chinese and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy th _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5 , 2011 Feng-hsi Liu _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5th, 2011 Rudolph Troike _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5th, 2011 Chia-lin Pao Tao _______________________________________________________________________ Date: _______________________________________________________________________ Date: Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: August 5th, 2011 Dissertation Director: Feng-hsi Liu 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Ke Peng 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would have been impossible for me to complete this thesis without the ongoing guidance and support of my committee. I owe many thanks to my adviser and chair of committee, Feng-hsi Liu , who has mentored and guided me towards numerous intriguing questions related to Chinese linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese. I have benefited tremendously from discussions with her and learning from her. Her broad knowledge and expertise of Chinese linguistics, and her open-mindedness as well as her full support for graduate students have made a long-term impact on my career development. Without her encouragement, direction and patience, I could not have finished my work. Professor Feng-hsi Liu read through different versions of my draft with great patience and provided me with numerous valuable suggestions. Unfortunately, time has not permitted me to incorporate all her suggestions into the draft, though I hope to at a later date. Meanwhile, as the author of this manuscript, I acknowledge responsibility for all the shortcomings the paper may contain. I am also very grateful to the other two members of my committee. Both Rudolph Troike and Chia-lin Pao Tao were very supportive and they always made themselves available whenever I needed help. Professor Rudolph Troike was very resourceful: he not only provided thorough feedback to my draft, but also referred me to an abundance of literature relevant to my studies. I benefited quite a bit from the fascinating exchanges I had with both Professor Rudolph Troike and Professor Chia-lin Pao Tao . I thank them for the positive energy and superb support of my work. I also thank all the faculty and staff members I have worked with at University of Arizona. My experiment was conducted online with the assistance and participation of Jianfei Chen and her students at Princeton University, Yi Xu and her students at University of Pittsburg, 5 Xia Zhang , Cindy Shih and their students at University of Arizona, Claire Wang and her students at Tucson Accelerated Learning Laboratory, and Jing Ma and his students at Tucson Unified School District. I really appreciate the kind help I have received from all these teachers and student volunteers. I want to extend my deep appreciation to my family and friends for their support. I thank my parents and sister for their unconditional love. They sacrificed themselves and provided me with the drive and means to achieve my dreams. They taught me how to practice true love in everyday life. I thank my dear friends, including Yang Yang , Lai Yao , Claire Wang , Tingda Li and many more, who accompanied and took good care of me after I lost my mom in May 2007. Without these loving and caring friends, I would not have been able to make it through that difficult time of my life. I also want to express special appreciations to my friend and former colleague at University of Arizona, Lucas Wolf , who took the time to proofread my entire thesis and made a significant amount of constructive contribution to my writing. I am very grateful for having such a group of caring and supportive friends. Additionally, it is truly a blessing that my beloved partner, Robert Allen , is such an angel and supports me in every way that he can. He has inspired and motivated me to further develop myself in many ways. I am also thankful to my mother-in-law, Marcia Allen , who has been supremely helpful all this time. Finally, to my dear mother, Lanfang (‘Fragrance of Orchid’) Peng , I dedicate this dissertation. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………………….…10 LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………….. 12 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………………13 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………….16 1.1 Cross-linguistic Variations………………………………………………………..……...16 1.2 L2 Learning Challenges…………………………………………………………..……...18 1.3 Overview of the Dissertation………………………………………………….…….…...22 CHAPTER 2 LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………………25 2.1 A Manner Language or A Path Language?………………………..…………..….……...26 2.2 Questions Unanswered in Talmy’s Typologies……………………..……………….…..29 2.3 Equipollently-framed Languages or A Case of Grammaticalization?...............................34 2.4 Questions Needed to be Answered………………………………...……………….........38 2.5 Event Structure of Causative Directed Manner-of-motion………………………………41 2.6 Light Verb Syntax of Chinese……………………………………………………………48 2.6.1 Characteristics of Light Verbs………………………………………..………..…..48 2.6.2 Light Verbs in Chinese and English……………………………..………………...53 2.7 Licensing Causative Directed Motion with Light Verbs…………..…………………….56 2.7.1 Light Verb ba for CAUSE and zhe for ACCOMPANY………………….………..59 2.7.2 Light Verb dao for the GOAL……………………………………………………..65 2.7.3 Questions Re-addressed……………………………………………………………69 CHAPTER 3 STUDIES OF L2 ACQUISITION OF DIRECTED MOTION………………………………….73 3.1 Learnability Challenges …………………………..……………………………………..73 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED) 3.2 Parameter Switch or Feature Assembly?……………………..……………….…………74 3.3 Previous SLA Studies of Directed Motion…..……………….……………..………...…76 CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY……………………………………………….81 4.1 Introduction …………..…………………………..………………………………….…..81 4.2 Variables…. …………..…………………………..………….……………….…………84 4.3 Instrument Development……………………..……………….……………..………...…86 4.4 Tasks…. …………..…………………………..………….……………….……………..88 4.4.1 Sentence Token Types……………………………………………………………..89 4.4.2 One Example………………...……………………………………………………..92 4.5 Participants………..…………………………..………….….…………….……………..95 4.6 Reliability and Validity of the Experiment…..………….……………….………………98 4.6.1 Two Experiment Subsets…………………………………………………………..98 4.6.2 Overall Reliability of the Two Subsets…………………………………………….99 4.6.3 Descriptive Statistics of the Two Subsets………………………………………...100 4.6.4 Homogeneity Variances between Two Experiment Subsets……………………..102 4.6.5 Validity of the Instrument………………………………………………………...104 CHAPTER 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………..114 5.1 Introduction…………..…………………………..…………………………….…….…114 5.2 The Instrument and Participants………………………………………………………..115 5.2.1 Validity and Reliability of the Proficiency Test………………………………….116 5.2.2 Two Proficiency Levels: Correlation and Regression Analysis…………….........116 5.3 The Results of the Picture Judgment Task………………………………………..…….118 5.3.1 Acquisition of TRANSITIVITY………………………………………………….118 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED) 5.3.2 Acquisition of GOAL…………………………………………………..………...125 5.3.3 Acquisition of CAUSATIVITY……………………………………………….….130 5.3.3.1 Acquisition of CAUSATIVITY