A Study On The Influence Of Chinese Topic Prominence Constructions On Interlanguage

There are many differences between Chinese and English. Typologically Chinese is a topic prominent language while English is a subject prominent language. Research shows two contradictory claims on the role of topic/subject prominence (TP/SP) typology in second language (L2) acquisition. One claim is that irrespective of learners'first language, the process of L2 acquisition is characterized by an early universal topic-prominent stage and that the typology of topic/subject prominence is not transferable. Another claim is that learners'L1 plays a role in their L2 learning and that as their L2 proficiency increases, native speakers of TP languages gradually increase the use of SP features in their L2 Production. However, both claims need more empirical evidence for further confirmation.Based on the typological difference and comparison of Chinese and English, the present study investigates the influence of Chinese Topic Prominence Contructions (TPC) on the acquisition of English with the instruments of translation task and acceptability judgment. The translation task intends to test the influence of TPC at performance level and the acceptability judgment for competence level. 60 subjects of English major were divided into two groups according to their English proficiency level.( the freshman for low level and the third grade students for high level) The results were analyzed and calculated in terms of four types of TPC: Noun phrase as topic, clause as topic, verb phrase as topic and prepositional phrase as topic.Three major findings were achieved from the present study. Firstly, learners'interlanguage is characterized by interference of TPC of their mother tongue—Chinese. Secondly, it shows the development of the interlanguage. Because of the feature of permeability of interlanguage, gradually learners'interlanguage becomes more target-like subject prominence with the increase of subjects'English proficiency level. After dividing the TPC sentences into four types in order to have a further analysis, it was found that the high level subjects used more prepositions or prepositional phrase to introduce the topic instead of using other three types which manifests the universal learning strategy. Thirdly, the second task partially proved that at competence level, Chinese TPC will not be transferred because no matter for high level or low level, the subjects are capable of identifying and rejecting incorrect English sentences with Chinese TPC.The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of Chinese EFL learners'interlanguage development from topic prominence to subject prominence at both the performance level and the competence level. Furthermore, the results of the current study are significant for the English teaching in China. The language teacher should enhance the typological comparison between Chinese and English so that the learners could be more aware of the difference between these two language and errors could be avoided.