On The Causes Of Difficulty In Learning The English Marginal Prepositions

In recent years, marginal prepositions are increasingly paid attention to in the linguistic studies, but the emphases are on the general definition and classification of them. The paper focuses on the degrees of acquisition of marginal prepositions, and deeply explores causes why learners have difficulties in acquiring these prepositions. In nearly 20 years, marginal prepositions gradually become important, but the forms of these prepositions are special and many of them are participial forms. Because of the particular forms, it is difficult to link these words with the preposition for learners.In fact, as a typical kind of preposition, the marginal prepositions also have some of the same grammatical functions as the common prepositions, and also the usage of them in modern English is not uncommon. For English learners, it is necessary to understand and master some marginal prepositions.The paper begins with the definition and classification, and also gives a clear explanation and analysis of the origin of the marginal prepositions. Then, the author employs the methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis including questionnaire and translation test in order to get the acquisition degrees of marginal prepositions. The questionnaire contains twenty-one questions with reference to the verbal marginal prepositions investigated. The author randomly samples the subjects among the students who have passed the CET-6. And translation tests consist of two types and they have the same contents, and the difference between them lies in the different requirements of tests. Then, the author compared and analyzed the test results through the SPSS 13.0 to verify the existence of the great difficulty in learning these prepositions. The participants are collected from junior students of biological major, and they have passed CET-4.On the basis of the results of the tests, the paper explores the causes from the four theoretical levels:(1) the author finds that learners tend to avoid these prepositions and use the simple prepositions to replace them. Avoidance can make learners rely on the single and simple structures and reduce the usage probability of marginal prepositions; (2) with the perspective of markedness theory, an unmarked form is considered as the more general and has a higher frequency. And the marked forms have the opposite characteristics. Compared to the common prepositions, the specificity of marginal prepositions lead to the difficulty of learning them to learners; (3) frequency is an important factor and one of the potential causes, the low frequency occurrences of these prepositions have negative effect on learning them. But the whole contents can't process in the same input, so the dispersion also affect the acquisition effects of these prepositions; (4) the inconsistency of form and meaning of marginal prepositions bring about the insecurity. Therefore, the insecurity produces difficulties and problems to learners, as a result, the alternative common prepositions become the preferred ones.The author gives recommendations accordingly and it is hoped that this result will be a valuable paper for the future researchers, be beneficial and helpful to learning the type of preposition, and can impel the English language teachers to do more research in this field, therefore find the effective way to teach.