Chinese-speaking College English Learners' Semantic Acquisition Of Can

Modal verbs are one of the most important means to express modality in English. With various semantic and pragmatic meanings, they are difficult for learners, even for native English speakers. Many researches have been conducted on the semantics of the English modal verbs from different perspectives; however, few researches have addressed the acquisition of their semantics by learners of English as a foreign language, especially by Chinese-speaking college English learners.Thus, with the method of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, the present corpus-based study explored whether the semantic frequency distribution of can in Chinese college English learners'output was different from that in native speakers'corpus, and whether the authenticity in those learners'semantic use of can is influenced by their English input and their first language.31 sophomores, from a four-year tuition-free teacher-training program, were randomly selected from a school in Southwest University as one group of subjects in this study. They were required to take a College English Test (Band-4) and 2 questionnaire-based surveys so as to provide data of their semantic use of the English modal verb can and of the Chinese semantic counterparts to it. Besides these,2 subjects selected from the 31 sophomores took part in an interview on the use of their English teaching materials. In addition, the authors of 5 files selected from the British National Corpus (BNC) were the other group of subjects in the present study.The data were elicited from a survey based on A Questionnaire on Chinese College English Learners'Semantic Use of Can and 3 corpora:a sub-corpus of BNC named Written English Corpus of Native Speakers, Center for Chinese Linguistics Corpus, and College English Learners'Input Corpus. With reference to Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners'English Dictionary and A Contemporary Chinese Dictionary,10 meanings of the English modal verb can and 4 meanings of the Chinese modal verb neng were identified. With the assistance of Wordsmith, Excel and SPSS, the data were examined using the Chi-square test.The results showed that the semantic frequency distribution of the selected modal verb can in Chinese college learners'written English was significantly different from that in native English speakers'use. Meanings 8 and 9 of can did not exist in Chinese college learners'written English. The occurrence frequencies of Meanings 5,6,7 and 10 in their written English were obviously higher than those in native speakers'use, while the occurrence frequencies of the first 4 meanings in the learners'written English were obviously lower than those in native speakers'use.Besides, the frequency distribution of the learners'use of can was also significantly different from that of their English teaching materials. However, no significant difference was observed between the learners'English teaching materials and native English speakers in terms of their frequency distributions of the use of can. Thus, the teaching materials, as the learners'main English input, did not seem to be the cause of the lack of authenticity in the learners'use of can, which was supported by feedback from learners in the interview on the use of the teaching materials.But the frequency distribution of the first 4 meanings of can in Chinese college learners'written English was similar to that of the meanings of the Chinese modal verb neng. The result seemed to suggest that the Chinese college learners'native language might have contributed to their inadequate acquisition of the semantics of the English modal verb can.The findings are significant in that they can help Chinese-speaking English teachers and learners better understand the semantic meanings of the English modal verb can. They are also helpful to draw learners'attention to authentic use of the target language and the possible influence of the native language on their English learning.