A Study Of Cross-linguistic Influence Of Mongolian On Mongolian College Students’ Acquisition Of English Degree Adverbs

Cross-linguistic Influence has been a hot topic in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Taylor, B.P. (1975) has proved that language learners tend to depend more on their first language at the elementary stage than the intermediate or advanced stage. When the first language and the target language have some coincidences in certain structure, the positive transfer might occur; otherwise, the negative transfer would influence the learners.The study focuses on the Cross-linguistic Influence of Mongolian on Mongolian college students’ acquisition of English degree adverbs. Based on the previous research findings as well as personal teaching experience, the author noticed that the negative transfer had been caused in the process of English degree adverbs learning during the fundamental English teaching for Mongolian college students. Especially when there were no equivalence in semantics or syntax in Mongolian, Mongolian students may borrow Mongolian’s to express strengthening, weakening and restriction, thus the negative transfer occurred.Based on the research theory of Second Language Acquisition at home and abroad as well as the English teaching status in Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, the author tries to analyze the writings samples of Mongolian college students by Contrastive Analysis of Mongolian and English degree adverbs as well as Error Analysis. The analysis is mainly made with respect to Mongolian’s negative transfer on Mongolian college students’acquisition of English degree adverbs.The participants of the study are second-year Mongolian non-English majors from Inner Mongolia Normal University.231 final papers from three classes are adopted as random samples. For the purpose of the effectiveness of the results,124 papers were used in the statistical analysis and Error Analysis by reason that English degree adverbs are used in the compositions’part.By analyzing the writing samples of Mongolian college students, the results show:Firstly, in writing samples, it is difficult for Mongolian college students to use various degree adverbs to express themselves in written English, since English degree adverbs have many subtypes. Based on Graeme, K.(2003), English DAs can be classified into amplifiers and downtoners semantically. Maximizers and boosters are subtypes of amplifiers. Downtoners can be subdivided into approximators, compromisers, diminishers and minimizers. Mongolian degree adverbs haven’t so many classifications. In Modern Mongol (2008), Mongolian degree adverbs are divided into two categories according to the competency of modifying adjectives:one is called "creative degree adverbs" while the other is "non-creative degree adverb". That’s why we just found six degree adverbs "very, so, too really, quite, never" used by Mongolian college students. Secondly, errors of misordering like "very like" and "very miss" occurred too much due to the cross-linguistic influence of mother language. According to the syntactic roles of English degree adverbs, English degree adverbs can modify adjectives, other adverbs, verb phrases and prepositional phrases and so on while Mongolian degree adverbs can only modify adjectives and verbs. However, when modifying verbs. Mongolian degree adverbs are followed by verbs. Thus negative transfer occurred here. Thirdly, many errors of addition like "very very much" are caused by Mongolian college students borrowing syntactic structure from Mongolian degree adverbs, that is "non-creative degree adverb".The present study is of important both in theory and practice. In theory, through the study of the cross-linguistic influence of Mongolian on Mongolian college students’ acquisition of English degree adverbs, the study enriches subfield of second language acquisition in Chinese minority areas. In practice, through Contrastive Analysis of Mongolian and English, the study can be a reference or a guide for relevant research. For Mongolian learners, the study may not only arouse the learners’ awareness of differences existing between Mongolian and English degree adverbs but also help them be more efficient in English learning. As for teachers of English who teach Mongolian students in Inner Mongolia, they could further more positive transfer from Mongolian avoiding negative transfer from Mongolian.