A Study On The Unlearning Of Null Subjects And Null Objects By Chinese High School Students

Empty category refers to language properties that possess certain syntactic and semantic functions without actual phonetic forms(Xu,1994),which has been a significant language phenomenon in second language acquisition.Being a type of subject-prominent language and influenced by the features of S-V Agreement and tense,English disallow null subjects and null objects;while as a type of topic-prominent language,with or without subjects and objects are both allowed in Chinese(Yuan,1997).Unlearning refers to the process that when learners are learning the second language,the influence of the first language on the second language system disappears gradually(Zhengchao,2003).Acquisition is learners’ attainment of the language ability no matter in first language or second language,unlearning is the process in which learners get rid of interferes from first language when they are learning second language.Within the framework of the Principle and Parameter Theory of Universal Grammar,this paper examines senior high school students’ unlearning of null subjects and null objects by conducting a grammaticality judgment and correction test.Based on the tests of Dai(2009)and Yu(2012),the test was revised in accordance with the learners’ English ability.129 students had taken the test,43 from grade ten,42 from grade eleven and 44 from grade twelve,the data from which were put into the SPSS Statistics Base 21.0 to be analyzed and processed through One-Way ANOVA,Two-Way Analysis of Variance and Simple Effects Analysis.On the basis of those data and relative literature,we can reach the following conclusions:First,the mean rates of rejecting the null subjects and null objects increase with the rising of English ability and proficiency.Second,a significant asymmetry is found between the unlearning of null subjects and the unlearning of null objects,which means learners have better performance on unlearning English null subjects than null objects.Third,there is an asymmetry between the unlearning of null arguments in matrix sentences and the unlearning of null arguments in embedded sentences,which means learners have more difficulty in unlearning null embedded arguments than unlearning null matrix arguments.Four,learners are doing better in rejecting null referential subjects than rejecting null expletive subject “it”,meanwhile there is correlation existing in the acquisition of referential subject and expletive subject “it”.According to those findings,some teaching suggestions have been proposed: teachers should choose teaching methods based on the teaching contents and students’ English level;the comparative teaching between English and Chinese should be strengthened;in the aspect of teaching contents,teachers need to make students have better understanding and acquisition of English embedded sentences,and the expletive and other triggers can not be ignored.In addition,to achieve the success of parameter resetting,relative negative evidence are supposed to be given appropriately.