Impediments to English speaking language learner acquisition of the Chinese perfective aspect : a quantitative analysis of four features of the post-verbal perfective "le"
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Modern Standard Chinese perfective aspect marker "le" is among the most widely used Chinese characters. Despite its ubiquitous presence, however, "le" remains difficult for even advanced language learners to master (c.f. Tong and Shirai 2016; Xu et al. 2019, inter alia). Previous studies have widely noted that English-speaking language learners often conflate "le" with the English past tense marker "-ed" (ibid). The present dissertation employs a novel methodological approach to investigate such errors. Whereas the predominant research approach (c.f. Duff and Li 2002; Yang 2016; Li et al. 2022, inter alia) examines language learner "le" production errors to probe for underlying principles, the current dissertation inverts this methodology by examining principles of "le" usage to probe for patterned language learner errors. In tandem, results suggest that many English-speaking language learners tend to incorrectly assume that the perfective "le" entails that the relevant situation has occurred before Speech Time, tend to incorrectly assume that the endpoint framed by "le" is inherently completive, tend to conflate the perfective "le" and the current relevancy marker "le" as a singular marker of past tense, and tend to be unaware of "le"'s syntactic and pragmatic restrictions. These findings highlight concrete, patterned "le" errors that may potentially be rectified through pedagogical intervention.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Palmer, Matthew White |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Sun, Chao |
| Thesis advisor | Sun, Chao |
| Thesis advisor | Hubbard, Phil |
| Thesis advisor | Matsumoto, Yoshiko |
| Degree committee member | Hubbard, Phil |
| Degree committee member | Matsumoto, Yoshiko |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Matthew White Palmer. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/qh620yn8322 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Matthew White Palmer
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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