Relative clause preference in learners of Chinese as a second language

It has been debated whether preference for subject-extracted relative clauses in language processing is a universal rule, with evidence from both first and second language acquisition studies. But very few studies focus on learners of Chinese as a second language. The current research studied Chines...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChinese journal of applied linguistics Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 199 - 214
Main Authors Qiang, Li, Xiaoyu, Guo, Yiru, Yao, Müller, Nicole
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Beijing De Gruyter 01.06.2016
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Subjects
Chinese
Chinese as a second language
Chinese languages
Grammar
Information processing
Language processing
relative clause
Relative clauses
second language acquisition
Second language learning
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ISSN2192-9505
2192-9513
DOI10.1515/cjal-2016-0013

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Summary:It has been debated whether preference for subject-extracted relative clauses in language processing is a universal rule, with evidence from both first and second language acquisition studies. But very few studies focus on learners of Chinese as a second language. The current research studied Chinese subject/object-extracted relative clauses processing among the learners of Chinese as a second language by a self-paced reading experiment. The results demonstrate a faster and more accurate processing of subject-extracted relative clauses in both subject and object modifying conditions, adding more evidence to the universal preference for the subject-extracted relative clauses. Both Frequency-Based Accounts and Memory-Based Accounts are discussed related to the current findings.
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ISSN:2192-9505
2192-9513
DOI:10.1515/cjal-2016-0013