On Be Verb Structure In L2Syntax Of Chinese Students

Within minimalist program, the fundamental difference between languages lies in thefunctional category and their composing features. The essence of SLA is to reset the feature valuesof functional category in target language. Therefore, it is conducive to our understanding of therules of SLA to explore the acquisition of functional category. Plenty of researches have shownthat L2learners produce a considerable amount of non-native be verb structure in their written orspoken English, in which be is neither a copula nor a progressive or passive auxiliary (Zobl,1989,pp.203-21; Yang&Huang,2004). With the feature checking mechanism of subject-verbagreement as a point of penetration, this thesis focuses on the incorrect uses of be verb structure inwritten and spoken English of Chinese students and the potential reasons behind them, aiming atexploring the intrinsic law and nature of be verb structure in the interlanguage of Chinese students.Within the framework of the Minimalist Program, the present study employs a combination ofqualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the incorrect use of be verb structure in bothwritten and spoken English, and thus to explore whether the Interlanguage Grammar system ofChinese learners of English is impaired or not. Based on detailed analysis of the research data andfurther exploration into the linguistic phenomenon, we come to the following conclusions. First,Chinese learners of English are capable of correctly feature-checking the functional category in beverb structure with their subjects both in written and spoken English, which indicates that theirinterlanguage syntactic system operate normally. Secondly, the absence of verb morphology in beverb structure is due to the problem of actuation of surface morphology instead of featureimpairment. Finally, Chinese learners of English show an asymmetric tendency in incorrect use ofbe verb structure in written English, while not in spoken English. The present study contends thatthe absence of surface inflections of functional category in Chinese L2learners of English is jointlydriven by the acquisition sequence of verbal morphemes in second language and L1transfer. In themeanwhile, this paper offers the possible explanation for the asymmetry of incorrect use of be verbstructure in matrix sentence and embedded sentence from the perspectives of syntactic level andsyntactic complexity. Finally, this thesis provides a macroscopic analysis for the research outcomefrom the perspective of interface theory and cognitive prominence.