Running head: ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Acquisition of the Chinese Resultative Construction
by English Speakers
Shuai Shao
Ohio University
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Abstract
This study will investigate the acquisition of the Chinese resultative construction by native
English speakers. Learners from three different levels of Chinese classes will finish both a video
description task and a grammaticality judgment test, and native Chinese speakers will also
participate as a control group. Data will be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, and
teaching implications will be provided.
Keywords: Chinese, resultative, acquisition
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Acquisition of the Chinese Resultative Construction
by Native English Speakers
Introduction
The Chinese resultative construction, which is also referred to as resultative verb
compounds (Cheng & Huang, 1994), is discussed by lots of studies. Similar to the English
resultative construction, it is formed by one verb and one complement, indicating the action and
the result of the action. For example,
Wo
I
qi huang le
na shan men.
paint-yellow-asp that-cl-door.
I painted that door yellow.
However, it is very different from the English resultatives in two aspects. First, in Chinese
resultatives, the verb and the complement have to be adjacent to each other, and therefore it is
also called resultative verb compounds. The object of the sentence can either be put after the
verb compound, just as the example shows, or before the verb compound if another function
word ba is inserted. For example,
Wo ba na shan men qi huang le.
I
ba that-cl-door paint-yellow-asp.
I painted that door yellow.
Secondly, the resultative structure is much more frequently used in Chinese than it is used in
English. It is due to many verbs in Chinese only indicate the actions but not the results. For
example,
Wo da
I
po
le huaping.
hit broken asp the vase.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
I broke the vase.
Therefore, to express the idea of one action and its result that English can express using one
word, like find, kill, see, Chinese would employ the resultative construction, zhaodao, shasi,
kanjian, literally meaning “look for and find”, “attempt to kill and dead”, “look and see”.
Because of the reasons above, it is reasonable to predict that learners of Chinese would
have difficulties in understanding the structure, or try to avoid using it. In order to investigate
how learners of Chinese learn this construction and the development in their learning process,
this study will focus on learners’ production and judgment of the Chinese resultatives.
Aims/Justifications
Among the studies of Chinese resultatives, most studies focused on the structure itselfhow it is formed and what the meaning is. However, little research has done on the acquisition of
the Chinese resultative construction by speakers of other languages. The current study is
important for two reasons. First, it will help us better understand how English speakers learn the
Chinese resultative constructions and how their L1 influence their learning. Secondly, it will help
teachers improve their class strategies in teaching the Chinese resultatives.
Literature Review
According to Cheng & Huang (1994), resultative verb compounds in Chinese can be
divided into four types based on two dimensions, aspectuality and transitivity, illustrated as
follows:
a. zhangsan qi-lei-le.
(unergative)
Zhangsan ride-tired-asp
'Zhangsan rode himself tired.'
b. zhangsan qi-lei-le liang-pi ma.
(transitive)
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Zhangsan ride-tired-asp two-cl horse
'Zhangsan rode two horses tired.'
c. zhangsan qi-si le.
(ergative)
Zhangsan anger-dead-asp
'Zhangsan got extremely angry.'
'(Lit.) Zhangsan was angered to death.'
d. zhe-jianshi zhen qi-si zhangsan le.
(causative)
This-cl matter really anger-dead Zhangsan asp
This matter really angered Zhangsan.'
'(Lit.) This matter really angered Zhangsan to death.'(Cheng & Huang, 1994)
In the examples above, (a) and (c) differ from (b) and (d) in transitivity: the former ones
are intransitive and the latter transitive. The (a) and (b) differ from (c) and (d) in aspectuality: the
former indicating activities and the latter indicating states or changes of states.
Similar to Chinese, there are also resultative constructions in English. In Perlmutter
(1978)’s unaccusative hypothesis, two types of intransitive verbs were identified: unaccusative
and unergative. Based on the unaccusative hypothesis, Park& Lakshmanan(2007) proposed two
types of English resultatives: transitive and unaccusative.
e. Kay painted the table green.
(transitive)
f. The river froze solid.
(unaccusative)
They also argue that unergative verbs cannot take a resultative interpretation.
g. *Dora shouted hoarse.
(unergative)
In their study, Park and Lakshmanan (2007) examined the acquisition of the unaccusativeunergative distinction in English by 23 Koreans learners of English, using a grammaticality
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
judgment task. The Korean resultatives, very similar to the English resultatives, also have
transitive and unaccusative types, but do not have an unergative type. Results show that there
was no significant difference among groups of intermediate non-native speakers, advanced nonnative speakers and native speakers in terms of accepting grammatical English resultative
sentences. There were, however, significant differences in judging the grammaticality of the
unaccusative type and the ungrammaticality of unergative type, for both Korean speakers and
native speakers. The authors argue that the results provide evidence that Korean speakers and
native speakers both made the unaccusative-unergative distinction in English resultatives.
Few studies have been done on the acquisition of the Chinese resultative construction by
speakers of other languages. In some of the studies, the Chinese resultatives are divided into
unergative and unaccusative types, rather than 4 types. Yuan (1999) examined the acquisition of
the distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs by English-speaking learners. He used
both an oral picture-description task and a sentence-acceptability judgment task. The pictures
were intentionally designed into three types: externally caused verbs (e.g. break, freeze), verbs of
directed motion (e.g. fall, escape) and agentive internally caused verbs (e.g. run, creep). Based
on the results, the author argues that learners of Chinese can eventually learn the distinction of
unaccusative and unergative verbs, but the elementary learners have great difficulty in
differentiating these two, being influenced by their L1.
Chen (2002) examined the acquisition of the English resultative construction by L1
Chinese learners. Participants were given both a grammaticality judgment task and a translation
task. Results show that learners have greatest difficulty in acquiring unergative verbs, comparing
with transitive and unaccusative verbs. In translation task, participants tended to produce
ungrammatical sentences when translating sentences with unergative and unaccusative verbs. For
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
sentences with transitive verbs, participants seemed to be more accurate in translating. The
author argues possible explanations for this include L1 transfer from Chinese, developmental
patterns, syntactic complexity, and the effects of English canonical word order. The author also
suggests learners need explicit instruction and correction in learning English resultative
sentences involving unergative verbs.
In terms of methodology, picture-describing or video-describing and grammaticality
judgment test were widely used in studies that looked at the acquisition of some certain
structures in English by Chinese speakers, and certain structures in Chinese by language learners.
Du (2006) investigates the acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction by foreign language
learners. He employed a production task in which participants were asked to describe actions
shown in videos, and a grammaticality judgment test. Participants were also asked to indicate
their confidence levels in the judgment task. In Chinese ba-construction, there has to be either a
le as a complement, or a resultative verb complement. Results show learners are more confident
judging sentences with le rather than sentences with resultative verb complements. The author
argues it may because the resultative verb complement is semantically more complex than le.
Chen&Oller (2008) looks at advanced Chinese speakers’ use of English passives and their
alternatives. Each participant in this study was shown a picture book and was asked to tell a story
based on it. The findings suggest due to the influence of their L1, even advanced speakers still
have difficulty in choosing various grammars. A comparison of the use of passives and
alternatives in English and Chinese was made to show the conceptual difference and a
constructional difference between the two languages.
No matter what grammatical structure that researchers are investigating, most of the
studies suggest that learners’ first language have an influence in their second language learning.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Yuan (1999) argue that learners of Chinese have difficulty in differentiating unaccusative and
unergative types of verbs, being influenced by their L1. Chen&Oller (2008) claim that even
advanced level learners of English would suffer a negative impact from their L1 in using English
passives. Chan (2004) argues that the influence of L1 transfer was particularly large in complex
structures from the target language and among lower level students.
In this study, I want to look at English speakers’ acquisition of the Chinese resultatives,
using both a video-describing task and a grammaticality judgment test. I will try to find out the
L1 influence on learning the Chinese resultatives, and the changes of learners’ use of the Chinese
resultatives over time.
Research Questions
There are 3 research questions that I attempt to answer:
1. Is there a significant difference in performance between the four groups, the second year L2
group, the third year L2 group, the fourth year L2 group, and the native speakers of Chinese
group?
2. Is there a significant difference in performance, within the four groups, between the four
different resultative construction types: unergative, transitive, ergative and causative?
3. How do learners’ L1 influence their learning of the Chinese resultatives?
Methodology
Subjects
54 students at Ohio University aged 18-25 will participate. 15 of them will be native
Chinese speakers and 39 will be native English speakers. Among the native English speakers, 20
of them will be enrolled in the second year Chinese class, 15 will be enrolled in the third year
Chinese class and 4 will be enrolled in the fourth year Chinese class. Hence, the three native
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
English speaker groups are marked as intermediate group, intermediate-high group, and
advanced group. The native Chinese speaker group is the control group.
Instruments
Two instruments will be used in this study. The first one is 8 short video clips that
describe actions and results of the actions. 6 of the video clips can be described using resultative
constructions and 2 will be distracters. The second instrument is a grammaticality judgment test.
30 sentences will be given to participants for them to judge the grammaticality, and 20 of the
sentences will be grammatical or ungrammatical resultative constructions, while 10 will be
distracters. For each sentence, participants will be asked to choose from a scale of 5 to 1,
meaning “definitely acceptable”, “probably acceptable”, “I can’t decide”, “probably
unacceptable” and “definitely unacceptable”. The test will provide both Chinese characters and
pinyin. Both of the two instruments are designed based on the intermediate level students’
knowledge of Chinese.
Procedure
1. A pilot study of video describing and grammaticality judgment test will be given to 3
native Chinese speakers and 3 native English speakers. Participants will be asked to describe the
video clips orally and finish the test. Their results will be recorded. Based on their answers,
videos and test will be revised to make sure participants would perform as I expect them to.
2. Video clips will be given to participants and they will be asked to describe the pictures
orally. For each video clip, one verb will be provided and the participants will need to use the
verb provided to describe. They will be encouraged to use as many sentences as possible and
there won’t be any time limit. The production will be recorded. The order of the video clips will
be randomized.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
3. The grammaticality judgment test will be given to participants and they will be asked
to judge the acceptance of each sentence.
Type of Data
There will be both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data from the production
task will include the alternative expressions participants use to describe results of actions and
their error patterns in using resultative constructions, and qualitative data from the
grammaticality judgment test will include the sentences that participants are most likely to
wrongly judge and sentences that participants are least likely to wrongly judge. Quantitative data
from the production task include the number of grammatical and ungrammatical resultatives that
participants use, and quantitative data from the grammaticality judgment task include the
responses that participants give for each sentence.
Data Analysis
To analyze the data, the oral production will first be transcribed. For the qualitative data,
I will classify and label the sentences from the grammaticality judgment test based on the four
types of resultatives (Cheng & Huang, 1994) to see which type is more difficult for learners to
judge. Also, non-native Chinese speakers’ substitute of the resultative constructions and their
error patterns will be compared with English resultatives. For the quantitative data, first, the
frequency of participants’ use of the resultative construction (both grammatical ones and
ungrammatical ones) will be counted and compared among different groups. Secondly,
participants’ judgment “scores” in the test will be compared among different groups. ANOVA
will be used in quantitative data analysis.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Limitations
The first problem is that I have limited number of participants, especially native English
speaker participants from advanced Chinese level. It is due to that I am choosing participants
from students who will be enrolled in advanced level Chinese class, and it could be predicted
that there probably will not be more than 5 students whose Chinese are good enough to take the
advanced level class.
Since I am going to do a simultaneous cross-sectional research, another limitation in my
study is the cohort effect. I will try to avoid this by choosing students who only learned Chinese
in Ohio University Chinese program as my participants. However, I won’t spread this principle
to the advanced level students because there are only 4 of them and 3 of them learned Chinese
outside of Ohio University before they were enrolled in the Chinese class in Ohio University.
Also, because the instruments I will be using are limited by the intermediate level
participants’ knowledge of Chinese, the sentences in the instruments may not be good examples
of the four types of resultatives (Cheng and Huang, 1994).
What’s more, the participants in my study may not be representative of the population of
English learners of Chinese.
Anticipated Results
First, learners of Chinese will use the resultative construction less frequently than native
Chinese speakers will. Native Chinese speakers will use more resultative constructions, which
indicate the action and the result in one sentence, while learners of Chinese may prefer to use
two sentences of which one describes the action and another describes the result. But there might
not be a significant difference between their results in the grammaticality judgment test.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Secondly, being influenced by L1, English speakers will make more mistakes on ergative
and causative types of resultative construction or avoid using them, rather than transitive and
unergative type.
Thirdly, learners will use the Chinese resultative construction more native-like as they
learn Chinese longer.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by looking at their production and judgment of the Chinese resultatives by learners
of Chinese, I hope to find some patterns in their development and evidences of their L1 influence. There
are some possible implications. Teachers may need to get more familiar with their students’ L1 in order to
better facilitate their students in learning. However, since there is a big difference in the frequency of
using resultatives in Chinese and English, what teachers should concentrate may not be the form and
meaning of the resultatives, but when to use it.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
References
Chan, A. (2004). Syntactic transfer: Evidence from the interlanguage of Hong Kong Chinese
ESL learners. The Morden Language Journal, 88(1), 56-74.
Chen, L. & Oller, J. W. J. (2008). The use of passives and alternatives in English by Chinese
speakers. Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar, 385-416.
Cheng, L. L. & Huang, C.J. (1994). On the argument structure of resultative compounds.
Pyramid Press.
Chen, M. (2002). Selected English small clause types in the interlanguage of Chinese/Taiwanese
adults. Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social Sciences,
63(8), 2854-A.
Du, H. (2006). The acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction. Munich: LINCOM EUROPA:
Academic Publications.
Park, K. & Lakshmanan, U. (2007). The L2 acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative
distinction in English resultatives. Proceedings of the Annual Boston University
Conference on Language Development, 31(2), 508-519.
Perlmutter, D. (1978). Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Proceedings of the
4th Berkeley Linguistics Society, 157-189.
Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language:
Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37(2), 275-296.
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Appendix A:
There are 8 video clips for the participants to describe. Here are the descriptions of each video:
1. Someone broke a vase.
2. Someone was packing a package and then he finished packing.
3. Someone was watching a movie, and when he finished watching, he said: “ I don’t
understand.”
4. Someone was doing his homework and then he finished.
5. Someone moved a vase from one table to another table.
6. Someone was talking on phone: “Can you say that again? I didn’t hear you.”
7. Someone said to another person: “Please write down your name here.”
8. Two people were talking about the lesson they just had. One said: “It was so difficult. I
don’t understand the professor.”
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Appendix B:
Grammaticality Judgment Test
Read the sentences below, and try to judge whether they are grammatical or ungrammatical, giving each
one a rating, from definitely acceptable to definitely unacceptable.
Remember these codes:
Definitely acceptable: 5
Probably acceptable: 4
I can’t decide: 3
Probably unacceptable: 2
Definitely unacceptable: 1
Review words in the following:
bāo
dǎ
kàn
dǒng
bāo guǒ
huā píng
diàn yǐng
qì
sǐ
包，打，看，懂 ，包裹，花瓶，电影，气，死
If you don’t know the meaning of a word, you can ask the researcher anytime in session.
Ready? Go!
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
zhāng xiǎo jiě bāo hǎo bāo guǒ le
1、 张 小姐包好包裹了。
zhāng xiǎo jiě bāo bāo guǒ hǎo le
2、张 小姐包包裹好了。
zhāng xiǎo jiě bāo guǒ bāo hǎo le
3、张 小姐包裹包好了。
tā
dǎ
pò
le huā píng
4、她打破了花瓶。
tā huā píng dǎ
pò
le
dǎ huā píng pò
le
5、 她花瓶打破了。
tā
6 、她打花瓶破了。
tā kàn dǒng le
nà chǎng diàn yǐng
7、他看懂了那 场 电影。
tā méi kàn dǒng nà chǎng diàn yǐng
8、他没看懂那 场 电影。
tā kàn nà chǎng diàn yǐng dǒng le
9、他看那 场 电影懂了。
tā dǒng kàn le
nà chǎng diàn yǐng
10、他懂看了那 场 电影。
tā
nà chǎng diàn yǐng kàn dǒng le
11、他那 场 电影看懂了。
mǎ dà wéi qì
sǐ
le
12、马大为气死了。
mǎ dà wéi hěn shēng qì
13、马大为很 生 气。
mǎ dà wéi qì
sǐ zhè jiàn shì
zhè jiàn shì
qì
sǐ
zhè jiàn shì
qì
mǎ dà wéi sǐ
le
14、马大为气死这件事了。
mǎ dà wèi le
15、这件事气死马大为了。
le
16、这件事气马大为死了。
zhè jiàn shì mǎ dà wéi qì
sǐ
le
17、这件事马大为气死了。
huā píng tā
dǎ
pò
le
18、花瓶她打破了。
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
bāo guǒ zhāng xiǎo jiě bāo hǎo le
19、包裹 张 小姐包好了。
mǎ dà wéi zhè jiàn shì
qì
sǐ
le
20、马大为这件事气死了。
tā
bú
xǐ huan nà
ge huā píng
21、她不喜欢那个花瓶。
tā kàn le
nà chǎng diàn yǐng
tā dǒng le
nà chǎng diàn yǐng
22、他看了那 场 电影。
23、他懂了那 场 电影。
zhāng xiǎo jiě bāo bāo guǒ le
24、张 小姐包包裹了。
bāo guǒ bāo hǎo le
25、包裹包好了。
huā píng dǎ
pò
huā píng pò
le
le
26、花瓶打破了。
27、花瓶破了。
zhāng xiǎo jiě méi bāo hǎo bāo guǒ
28、张 小姐没包好包裹。
zhāng xiǎo jiě
xǐ huan bāo bāo guǒ
29、张 小姐喜欢包包裹。
tā
xǐ huan kàn diàn yǐng
30、他喜欢看电影。
谢谢！Thank you!
ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESE RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTION
Scale Sheet for the grammaticality judgment test
Participant number: _____
Data & Time: _________/2011, from ____to _____
Gender: Female Male
Age: Between 18-20 Between 21-24 Between 25-30 Above 30
What Chinese class are you currently enrolled in? 212/522
311/532 411/542
Your response will remain confidential and will be used for research purposes only.
Please do not write your name on any part of this questionnaire.
Codes:
Definitely acceptable: 5; Probably acceptable: 4;
Probably unacceptable: 2;
No.
Code No.
I can’t decide: 3
Definitely unacceptable: 1
Code No.
Code No.
Code No.
1
7
13
19
25
2
8
14
20
26
3
9
15
21
27
4
10
16
22
28
5
11
17
23
29
6
12
18
24
30
谢谢！Thank you!
Code