A Usage-based Approach To Chinese EFL Learners' Use Of English Periphrastic Causative Verbs And Their Constructions

This thesis investigates the features in Chinese EFL learners'use of high-frequency periphrastic causative verbs and their constructions, and how these features are explained in the framework of usage-based model.This thesis consists of six parts. The first part is the introduction. It presents the background, significance, objective, and structure of the study. The second part presents the literature review of causation including causation, causative verbs, periphrastic causatives and causatives in second language acquisition both home and abroad. The third part describes the theory foundations of the study. The main theoretical frameworks are usage-based model and construction grammar.The fourth part is the research design. Three parts are included in this Chapter: research questions, research methodology and data analysis. Based on the research questions, this thesis mainly adopts a corpus study, with a survey study as a supplement. In the corpus study, three corpuses are used: SWECCL (Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners), CLEC (Chinese Learner English Corpus) and BNC (British National Corpus). Two high-frequency periphrastic causative verbs make and let are found according to the retrieval to SWECCL. So the focus of the study is on these two verbs and their constructions. The paper retrieves SWECCL and CLEC from three perspectives: by text type (argumentation and narration), students'level (ST2, ST3, ST6) and the arguments in construction itself (causer, causee, Vinf). In order to explore the reasons which bring about the results of the corpus study, this thesis designs two questionnaires to investigate the influence of verb frequency and category similarity on participants'judgments on the acceptability of make sb/sth Vinf. By doing so, the results of corpus study get a better analysis in the framework of usage-based model.The fifth part presents the results and discussion. The results of the corpus study and survey study show that : (1) Chinese EFL learners use more make and let constructions in argumentations than in narrations, and this is decided by the characteristic of these text styles. This feature suggests that contexts influence learners in choosing different expressions. (2) Middle-level learners overuse the make and let constructions while high- and low-level learners used the constructions relatively less. This tendency reflects the process of learners'acquiring these two causative constructions, which indicates that comprehension and production are integral in learning language, and moreover, frequency and experience with language are very important in language acquisition. (3) The causers in make constructions tend to be inanimate while causers and causees in let constructions tend to be animate, which results from the fact that make express"direct causation", but let express"indirect causation"; the construction make sb/sth Vinf actually shows very strong preferences for particular groups of verbs (descriptive verbs, verbs that describe mental process, and verbs that describe physiological process) in the non-finite verb slot. This kind of preference results from the connotation of make construction. These two findings imply that frequency is important in building a grammar system. (4) The make sb/sth Vinf construction with a high-frequency Vinf is judged more acceptable than those with a low-frequency Vinf; the make sb/sth Vinf construction with a Vinf which is low-frequency but categorically related to high-frequency Vinfs is judged more acceptable than the one with a Vinf which is low-frequency and categorically less related to high-frequency Vinfs. These results indicate that both frequency and category similarity are significant in determining the acceptability of an expression. Since frequency is from the experience of language, so experience with language is very important in language acquisition.The sixth part makes a conclusion of the present study. A brief summary of findings, implications, and limitations of the present study are stated in this chapter.