How Do Chinese EFL Learners Perceive Ergatives?
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This paper illustrates some properties of ergatives in Chinese in comparison with English and examines how Chinese EFL learners perceive English ergatives. For our discussion in this paper, we have conducted a survey among 60 Chinese college students. The subjects were asked to judge 5 English ergative constructions and translate them into Chinese. The findings of the survey reveal that the subjects judge them to be grammatical at the rate of 58.6%, which is rather low to our expectation. This is attributable to the nature of some Chinese ergatives exclusively used as such, resisting alternation with transitives. Another finding is that English ergatives are represented as a variety of constructions in Chinese such as ergatives, passives, transitives, ba-constructions, and resultative verb compounds (RVCs) in the order from highest to lowest in their occurrences. We ascribe this to the lack of one-to-one correspondence in ergatives between the two languages.
Abstract
This paper illustrates some properties of ergatives in Chinese in comparison with English and examines how Chinese EFL learners perceive English ergatives. For our discussion in this paper, we have conducted a survey among 60 Chinese college students. The subjects were asked to judge 5 English ergative constructions and translate them into Chinese. The findings of the survey reveal that the subjects judge them to be grammatical at the rate of 58.6%, which is rather low to our expectation. This is attributable to the nature of some Chinese ergatives exclusively used as such, resisting alternation with transitives. Another finding is that English ergatives are represented as a variety of constructions in Chinese such as ergatives, passives, transitives, ba-constructions, and resultative verb compounds (RVCs) in the order from highest to lowest in their occurrences. We ascribe this to the lack of one-to-one correspondence in ergatives between the two languages.
참고문헌 (20)
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