Cross Language Influence Of Chinese College Students’ Second Language Acquisition Of English Articles In Bilingual And Trilingual Environments

Based on the generative grammar paradigms such as the Principles&Parameters Theory and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis,this dissertation investigates the substitutions and omissions of Chinese college students’ second language acquisition of English articles in bilingual and trilingual environments,and analyzes the mechanism of cross language influence behind the phenomena of errors by probing into the factors in the acquisition process such as the first language(L1)forward negative transfer,the third language(L3)lateral positive transfer,Universal Grammar(UG)principle guidance and parameter access,the second language(L2)input and its proficiency,the coupling effect of L3[+article]type and L3 proficiency.To explore the influence of different factors on Chinese college students’acquisition of English articles,the objectives of this study are as follows:to check the explanatory power of Article Choice Parameter(ACP),Fluctuation Hypothesis(FH)and Modified Fluctuation Hypothesis(MFH)on article substitution errors;to compare the explanatory power of Syntactic Misanalysis Account(SMA),Remapping Principle(RP),Representational Deficit Hypothesis(RDH),Missing Surface Inflectional Hypothesis(MSIH),Distributed Morphology(DM),Full Transfer Full Access(FT/FA)on article omission errors;to test some Trilingual Acquisition Models based on Indo-European languages such as Typological Primacy Model(TPM),The Linguistic Proximity Model(LPM),Cumulative Enhancement Model(CEM),The Scapel Model(SM),etc..To accomplish the above goals,this dissertation tries to answer the following questions:(1)Do L3[±article]types and different L3 proficiencies have differences in L2 English article acquisition?(2)Does the semantic feature of[presupposition]embodied in the form of[partitivity]affect the choice of L2 articles by L1[-article]Chinese learners?(3)Is it necessary to combine the deduction of ACP parameters with the induction of[presupposition]feature to explain the Second Language Acquisitio(SLA)of English articles by Chinese college students?(4)Whether the[±definiteness]encoded by non-article forms such as word order,syntactic position,demonstrative pronoun and numeral in L1 Chinese can promote the acquisition of L2 English articles through positive transfer?(5)Do natural language families and objective language distance influence L2 article acquisition of Chinese college students?To answer these questions,this study conducted two experiments:Dialogue induced forced choice of articles and picture induced free written production of articles.A total of 179 subjects from 9 groups with different L2 and L3 participated in the two experiments.The results of Experiment 1 show that[specificity]and[presupposition]are two independent variables,which have significant main effects on the choice of English articles of all subjects,and there is no interaction between them,i.e.,they both interfere with the choice of English articles of Chinese college students thus causing fluctuations.In addition,both L3[+article]type and L2 English proficiency significantly affect L2 article choice,while L3 proficiency only promotes L3 article choice in L3[+article]language.The results of Experiment 2 are as follows:the correct output of the basic usages of two articles and article omission could not reflect the group differences in L3[±article]type,different L2 and L3 proficiencies,but all the 9 groups had 6 kinds of substitution errors,among which the highest was the substitution a/an for the,indicating that[specificity]also interfered with most of the subjects’ article output.In addition,presupposition is mainly incarnated in the semantic truth value of the preceding and the following sentences rather than the set-member of patitivity.It is found that some subjects are also interfered by this kind of presupposition in the production of articles.In a word,the innovative design of Chinese college students’ acquisition of English articles in bilingual&trilingual environments finds that there exists the lateral transfer from L3 to L2,indicating that the similarity of[+article]language type or language structure is the main basis determining the direction and source of transfer,which extends the conclusion that there is only L1 to L2 forward transfer in previous literatures,and it also breaks through the limitation that the transfer only occurs in the initial state of acquisition,as FT/FA holds.L2 proficiency is directly proportional to the score of English articles choice,displaying that English articles can be taught and learned.L3 proficiency only has a coupling effect with L3[+article]type,revealing that language type plays a decisive role.To explain the fluctuation of L2 article choice,we should combine the deduction and induction of ACP parameters and[presupposition]feature.The effective explanations for L2 article omissions are FT/FA,MSIH and DM.There exists no impairment in the interlanguage syntax.SLA is not merely guided by UG,but also influenced by L1 forward and L3 lateral transfer.UG and multilingual bi-directional transfer are compatible and work together in the whole process of L2 acquisition rather than only at the initial state.The conclusion of combining parameters and features in explaining the language acquisition provides a compromise and reconciliation evidence for the controversy between parameter resetting and feature reassembly in the construction of SLA theory.The discovery of laterally positive transfer from L3 to L2 expands the theoretical limitations of some Third Language Acquisition(TLA)models,which only focus on the influence of the previously acquired languages on the subsequently learned languages.Meanwhile,it is suggested that the teaching of English articles should stick to the criterion of[±definiteness],reduce the interference of[specificificity]&[presupposition],and adopt the formulaic teaching method to help students to memorize and understand the socio-cultural and structural usages of English articles.