Chinese EFL Learners’ Overuse of Be: Focusing on Its Formal and Distributional Characteristics
0
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This study investigated the redundant occurrences of be in a corpus of Chinese students’ written English, focusing particularly on three aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristic patterns of their overuse of be according to proficiency level, the forms and types of the accompanying main verb, and the association between redundant be and its (non-)finite forms. The findings indicate that the frequency of redundant be errors is closely related to the syntactic properties of the main verb. When the main verb is a transitive or unergative verb, be appears most frequently with the root form of the verb. Redundant be before the root form of a verb is often used as an auxiliary verb in negative, interrogative, passive, or emphatic constructions. When the main verb is an unaccusative verb, redundant be appears more often before the past participle form of the verb. The finite form of redundant be occurs less frequently as the students’ proficiency develops, but the frequency of the nonfinite form does not change significantly. These indicate that Chinese students’ excessive use of be may not improve as a function of proficiency.
Abstract
This study investigated the redundant occurrences of be in a corpus of Chinese students’ written English, focusing particularly on three aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristic patterns of their overuse of be according to proficiency level, the forms and types of the accompanying main verb, and the association between redundant be and its (non-)finite forms. The findings indicate that the frequency of redundant be errors is closely related to the syntactic properties of the main verb. When the main verb is a transitive or unergative verb, be appears most frequently with the root form of the verb. Redundant be before the root form of a verb is often used as an auxiliary verb in negative, interrogative, passive, or emphatic constructions. When the main verb is an unaccusative verb, redundant be appears more often before the past participle form of the verb. The finite form of redundant be occurs less frequently as the students’ proficiency develops, but the frequency of the nonfinite form does not change significantly. These indicate that Chinese students’ excessive use of be may not improve as a function of proficiency.
참고문헌 (19)
- Balcom, P, "Why is this happened? Passive morphology and unaccusativity", Second Language Research, 13(1), pp.1~9 (1997)
- Burt, M. K, "The gooficon: A repair manual for English" (1972), Newbury House
- Burzio, L, "Current trends in phonology: Models and methods", pp.123~141 (1996), European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford Publications
- Cai, J, "Overpassivization of unaccusative verbs in Chinese-English interlanguage", Foreign Languages Research, 6, pp.15~35 (2008)
- Han, Z-H, "Persistence of the implicit influence of NL: The case of the pseudo-passive", Applied Linguistics, 21(1), pp.78~105 (2000)
- Hubbard. P, "Perspectives on pedagogical grammar", pp.49~71 (1994), Cambridge University Press
- Hubbard, P, "Where vocabulary meets grammar: Verb subcategorization errors in ESL writers", CATESOL Journal, 1, pp.89~100 (1988)
- Ionin, T, "Proceedings of the 2000 second language research forum", pp.76~94 (2001), Cascadilla Press
- Ju, M-K, "Overpassivization errors by second language learners", Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, pp.85~111 (2000)
- Lee, N, "To be or not to be: The variable use of the verb be in the inter-language of Hong Kong Chinese children", RELC, 35(2), pp.211~228 (2004)
- Levin, B, "Thematic structure: Its role in grammar", pp.247~269 (1992), Foris
- Oshita, H, "What is happened may not be what appears to be happening: A corpus study of “passive” unaccusative in L2 English", Second Language Research, 16(4), pp.293~324 (2000)
- Perlmutter, D. M, "Impersonal passives and unaccusative hypothesis", Berkeley Linguistic Society, 4, pp.157~189 (1978)
- Richards, J, "Error analysis: Perspectives on second language learning" (1974), Longman
- Schachter, J. E, "An analysis of learner production of English structures", Georgetown University Papers on Languages and Linguistics, 15, pp.18~75 (1979)
- Sorace. A, "The current state of interlanguage", pp.153~175 (1995), John Benjamins
- Yang, S-Y, "Functions of be in the interlanguage of Chinese learners of English", Presented at the 7th ESEA International Conference (2002), Baptist University
- Yip, V, "Interlanguage and learnability: From Chinese to English" (1995), John Benjamins
- Zobl, H, "Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition", pp.203~221 (1989), Cambridge University Press