A Study Of There-be Construction In Chinese English Learners' Interlanguage

As a particular sentence pattern in English, there-be construction is widely used in English. It has been one of the concerns of linguistics and second language acquisition studies. Domestically, most of the previous studies are theoretical researches. Only a few people have made research on Chinese learners' acquisition of there-be sentence. What's more, systematic studies on there-be constructions produced by Chinese learners with low, medium and high proficiencies were few. The present paper aims to study the Chinese learners'acquisition of English there-be constructions and explore the various influencing factors in Chinese learners' acquisition of English there-be sentences.By examining Chinese learners' interlanguage, the study aims to answer the following questions: first, which structure do Chinese English learners tend to use when they express existences,"Locative Adverbial + V + NP (Chinese Existential Structure)"or"There + V + NP + Locative Adverbial (English Existential Structure)"? Second, what types of errors do the Chinese learners tend to make when they use"there-be"structures and how are the errors distributed in different levels of learners? Third, what role does first language transfer play in the acquisition of there-be construction? The study involved 143 students from three different schools, namely second-year juniors from Lanzhou No. Twenty Middle School, second-year seniors from Yuzhong No. One Middle School and sophomores from Northwest Normal University. They are given a language test which contains two sections on the use of there-be construction, and then the test results are presented and analyzed. The major findings of the current study are summarized as follows:First, students in senior two exhibit the highest frequency in the use of this structure while students in junior two use it the least frequently and sophomores lie in the middle.Second, sophomores show an increase in the complex use of there-be structure not only in number but also in variety.Third, the major error types detected in students' production are: disagreement, there+have / there be+have and existential pseudo-relatives. The errors made by the students in the three groups decrease not only in number but in type as well when the grade rises.Lastly, first language transfer, generally speaking, plays a negative role in the acquisition of there-be construction. The findings, to a certain extent, extend our understanding of how this structure is learnt. The common characteristics shared by Chinese learners found in this study will be of some help to both teachers and learners. Limitations exist in this research and further investigations on this structure should be carried out in subsequent studies.