A Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Knowledge Of Island Constraints

The term "island constraints" refers to the grammatical phenomena that elements in a construction such as a subject clause, an adjunct, or a relative clause (RC) cannot move out of the construction. In generative linguistics, the phenomena are accounted for by the subjacency principle, which means that no constituent can move across more than one bounding node at a time. The subjacency principle is claimed to be autonomous, domain-specific and innate.Recently, the subjacency principle has been challenged by an emergentist theory: back-grounded constructions are islands (BCI). According to BCI, island constraints are said to be determined by information structure properties of constructions. For instance, non-presentational RCs, and time adjuncts are predicted to be islands because they are back-grounded in a sentence; presentational RCs, and purpose or reason adjuncts are sometimes not islands because they are fore-grounded.In SLA, a large number of studies have been conducted to test second language learners’knowledge of island constraints within the generative framework to see whether they have access to Universal Grammar (UG). However, no SLA studies have been based on BCI.Inspired by the debate between the nativist subjacency principle and the emergentist BCI hypothesis, this study examined the Chinese EFL learners’knowledge of island constraints in order to see which theory best accounts for such knowledge.The subjects included both Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners and English natives. They were asked to take a grammaticality judgment test, which consisted of some sentences whose island status UG and BCI do not agree upon. They also took a negation test and completed a question formulation task.The study yielded the following results:1) Chinese EFL learners know that adjuncts, RCs, and some complement clauses are islands. More importantly, they treat the subtypes of the islands differently. They think that extractions from purpose clauses are more acceptable than those from time and reason adjuncts, those from presentational RCs are more acceptable than those from non-presentational RCs, those from factive or manner-of-speaking verb complements are more acceptable than those from bridge verb complements, and those of the recipient argument in active ditransitives are unacceptable.2) Native English speakers consider adjuncts, RCs, and some complement clauses as islands and treat the subtypes of the islands differently. Similar to Chinese EFL learners, they rendered extractions from purpose clauses, presentational RCs, and factive or manner-of-speaking verb complements more acceptable than those from reason and time adjuncts, non-presentational RCs and bridge verb complements respectively. They also consider extractions of the recipient argument in active ditransitives unacceptable.3) The Chinese EFL learners’sensitivity to the island-hood of adjunct clauses, RCs, sentential complements, and recipient arguments increases as their language proficiency rises, implying that L2learners can acquire the intricate knowledge if their English proficiency is high enough.4) The Chinese EFL learners’ knowledge of island constraints is related to their knowledge of information structure of sentences, suggesting that the grammatical knowledge is derived from non-grammatical factors.Although UG predicts that language learners should have knowledge of island constraints, it does not predict that they treat different types of adjuncts, RCs, and complements differently. The fact that Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers tend to accept extractions ruled out by UG but predicted by the BCI hypothesis lends support to BCI, and thus adds weight to BCI or emergentist theories but pose threat to UG and UG-based SLA studies. The findings are of value in improving the description and explanation of L2learners’ linguistic competence.