A Longitudinal Study On Chinese Students’ Acquisition Of Pre-attributives In English Noun Phrases

Since it plays an important role in semantic, syntax and pragmatic understanding, noun phrase attracts great attention in language research. Noun phrase consists of pre-attributive, head word and post-attributive, among which, pre-attributive is the most complex one. Determiner, modifier and noun all can modify head word and precede head word, so they are called pre-attributives in this paper. The word order of pre-attributives needs discussing intensively. In English study, Chinese students are likely to be influenced by their mother language--Chinese when outputting pre-attributives in noun phrase. So far, there appear a certain number of studies on noun phrase’s pre-attributives. However, most of them are about one specific component in pre-attributives, namely, the acquisition of article. As for the previous studies on word order of pre-attributives, they are all about description of word order of adjectives or modifiers. Few of them provide detailed reasons for word order. There is even less about Chinese students’acquisition of noun phrase and none on the acquisition of word order of pre-attributives. Therefore, it is quite necessary to study how students acquire word order of pre-attributives in noun phrase to reveal the nature of inter-language.In this study, word order of pre-attributives in a noun phrase is analyzed from the use of determiners, order of modifiers and order between determiner and modifier. It mainly focuses on the question that how students’acquisition of pre-attributives in noun phrase develops, specifically including:1) How do Chinese students acquire word order of determiners in noun phrases?2) How do Chinese students acquire word order of modifiers in noun phrases?3) How do Chinese students acquire word order of a noun phrase with both a determiner and a modifier?What’s more, the question how does Chinese students’acquisition of noun phrases develop is answered, including1) How does Chinese students’acquisition of noun phrase develop in general?2) How does Chinese students’acquisition of every single type of noun phrase develop?Three test papers with the same test contents are used to get the data for noun phrase and pre-attributives. Students from Jingzhou Experimental School, Jingzhou Middle school and Liberal arts college of Yangtze University to complete the according test papers. These study subjects represents three different level students who are going to or have received the same English education without any intelligence difficulties or superiority. After all the data are collected, SPSS17.0are used to analyze them to get Chinese students’acquisition of noun phrase and pr e-attributives.The study results indicate:1. Students use more and more noun phrases in their second language learning process, while its accuracy decreases and then increases. That’s to say, noun phrase acquisition is non-linear and multi-modular development.2. Error appears the most frequently in noun phrase is misuse of head word, especially confusion between plural form and singular form of head word, followed by mistakes o f article " the "3. Chinese students acquire pre-attributives in noun phrase better and better, but they seldom use post-modifier.4. Acquisition of word order of determiners is not good, with quite low accuracy. The whole development is non-linear with increase-decrease trend.5. Acquisition of modifiers, generally speaking, is better than that of determiners. But It keeps decreasing with different rate in the accuracy of modifiers word order in students’acquisition process.6. Students acquire word order between determiner and modifier relatively well with high accuracy.In conclusion, noun phrase acquisition is a non-linear development with some different modularity.In accordance with these study results, theoretical, pedagogical and methodological implications are provided in this study. The present study firstly verifies the multi-modular and non-linear development of second language development. Meanwhile, second language acquisition is a non-linear system. This study reveals Λ,Ⅴ, etc. development of noun phrase acquisition.Besides, this study unfolds great implication to the edition of teaching materials and teaching syllabus, as well as to instructors and learners. Since the development of noun phrase especially pre-attributives word order by Chinese students is revealed, relative teaching materials and syllabuses need editing in accordance with these changes and development.In addition, this study suggests longitude study is very useful to inter-language analysis from different angles including amount and accuracy.