The Acquisition Of Exhaustivity In Shi-cleft By Mandarin L2 Learners

Cleft constructions can convey exhaustivity,and the status of this exhaustive inference has long been a hot and challenging topic in the field of modern Chinese syntax.A review of related studies shows that,on the one hand,the constructions that give rise to exhaustivity are not limited to shi-clefts,but also include exclusive,pseudocleft,and canonical sentences.On the other hand,there is no consensus on the nature of exhaustivity in shi-cleft,and the main accounts can be categorized into three types of analysis: the assertion account,the presupposition account,and the conversational implicature account.Empirical research on the exhaustivity of Mandarin shi-cleft has made certain achievements not only in monolingual studies but also in the field of second language acquisition.However,there are still issues such as the classification of the exhaustivity of shi-clefts within which interface and whether L2 learners can acquire it.According to the Interface Hypothesis(Sorace,2011),acquiring language phenomena that involve external interfaces or other cognitive domains may pose challenges even for near-native L2 speakers.Therefore,this study attempts to investigate whether L2 Chinese learners differ from native Chinese speakers in their interpretation of exhaustivity with shi-cleft.The specific research questions are as follows:Question 1: Do L2 learners’ inferential patterns of exhaustivity differ from those of native Chinese speakers?Question 2: Does L2 proficiency influence the inferential patterns of exhaustivity with shi-cleft?Question 3: Does L2 learners’ processing proficiency of exhaustivity differ from that of native Chinese speakers?To answer the aforementioned questions,this study employed two experimental tasks: a forced-choice task and a self-paced reading task aiming to gather relevant data from both language selection and language comprehension perspectives.Experiment 1primarily focused on two aspects:(1)investigating whether L2 learners have attained inferential patterns comparable to those of native speakers concerning the exhaustivity of shi-cleft,and(2)examining potential differences in the understanding of exhaustivity among L2 learners at different proficiency levels.In Experiment 1,a total of 94 native Chinese speakers and 47 Chinese learners participated in the forced-choice task.The results indicated that L2 learners exhibited different inferential patterns for exhaustivity compared to native speakers.Although some L2 learners demonstrated sensitivity to exhaustivity in shi-cleft similar to that of native speakers,there were still statistically significant differences between them.In addition,L2 proficiency affected learners’ inferential pattern of exhaustivity in shi-cleft.In comparison to the native speakers,high-proficiency learners showed a more pronounced divergence in their interpretation of exhaustivity in shi-cleft,while low-proficiency learners encountered greater difficulties in interpreting the exhaustivity of exclusive and canonical sentences.The differences between high-proficiency and low-proficiency learners were not statistically significant.Experiment 2 was conducted to investigate whether Chinese learners exhibited a greater cognitive load when comprehending the exhaustivity of shi-clefts.For this experiment,a total of 30 native Chinese speakers and 27 Chinese learners took part in the self-paced reading task.The results indicated that L2 learners’ processing proficiency affected their inferential patterns of exhaustivity in shi-cleft.Specifically,the processing proficiency of L2 learners was significantly lower than that of native speakers,as they required more cognitive resources to process the exhaustivity.In summary,the main finding of this study is that L2 learners exhibited differences in their understanding of exhaustivity in shi-cleft compared to native Chinese speakers,and L2 proficiency also influenced learners’ acquisition of exhaustivity in shi-cleft.The reasons for these differences might lie in the complexity of the interface between syntax and semantics,which posed challenges to the acquisition of exhaustivity in shi-cleft.Additionally,factors such as language distance from a psychotypological perspective and the input frequency also have impacted L2learners’ mastery of exhaustivity.This study contributed to the typological research on the semantics of shi-cleft and suggested that the exhaustivity in shi-cleft originates from the presuppositional aspect.This study also has practical implications for the teaching of semantic aspects in shi-cleft,helping L2 learners better understand the link between exhaustivity and shi-cleft,and enhancing Chinese learners’ communicative competence,language expression skills,and language comprehension abilities.