English Japanese And Korean Students Of Chinese Topic Sentences Experimental Research

This paper, combing the frameworks of functional linguistics and formal linguistics, investigated the acquisition of typical Chinese topic constructions by English, Japanese and Korean learners. To be specific, we examined how these learners of different mother tongue backgrounds comprehended Chinese topic constructions, besides, their on-line processing of these sentences was also explored.The results showed: (i) L1 speakers are not sensitive to the distinction between Topic/Non-topic constructions, whereas L2 learners, irrespective of their L1s, are very sensitive to the difference; (ii) Compared with Japanese and Korean learners, English learners have much more trouble in comprehending Chinese topic constructions, although all L2 learners confront difficulties in understanding this sentence structure, and (iii) Based on the above findings, we posit that since Japanese and Korean learners process Chinese topic constructions in a similar way as Chinese native speakers do, they experience less difficulty in understanding this sentence structure, and these difficulties found among English learners are due to the Minimal Attachment Strategy employed by them when processing topic constructions.