A Study On Preposition Acquisition By Native English Speakers

Although there are not many modern Chinese prepositions,which are relatively closed,they play a very important role in syntax.This paper selects grade A prepositions in the"Chinese Proficiency Grading Standard and Grammar Grading Outline"as the research object,including"在,对,从,为,和,跟,为了,当,给,除了……(之外),向,往,离,朝".In the Grade A syllabus,"把,被,叫,让,比"involve special sentence patterns,so they are not included in the scope of research.First the author exhaustively searched the Global Chinese Interlanguage Corpus,Jinan University International Student Written Corpus and HSK Dynamic Composition Corpus to find out the use cases of 14 prepositions used by native English speakers,and classified,graded and analyzed them.This paper divides prepositions into five categories:time preposition,space preposition,object preposition,basis preposition and cause preposition,and analyze the use form of each use case,whether there is a bias and the type of bias from three learning stages:primary,intermediate and advanced.Then,on the basis of mathematical statistics and comparative analysis,the paper statistics the frequency of use of prepositions,such as frequency of use,form of use,accuracy,error type,error rate,etc.And these data are compared,for example,the acquisition of different learning stages,the acquisition of different prepositions in the same stage,the differences in usage between English native speakers and Chinese native speakers,etc.In addition,the article also conducted error analysis,and infered the causes of native English speakers’errors.Based on the above statistics and analysis,the authto the following conclusions:the acquisition of prepositions by native English speakers is generally ideal,the use of prepositions basically increases step by step,the accuracy of using prepositions is generally on the rise,and the most common types of bias are omission and missubstitution.The whole acquisition process of prepositions is dynamic and develops gradually in a better direction,and the level of Native English speakers is gradually transitioning to the target language.Finally,the author puts forward teaching suggestions and the arrangement order of prepositions in the textbook based on the summarized acquision rules and errors,hoping to help native English speakers acquire Chinese prepositions.