Spanish L2 Chinese Learners’ Awareness of Morpho-Syntactic Structures in the Reading Comprehension of Splittable Compounds

Reading comprehension is never considered a simple task in linguists’ views as it requires a full set of linguistic knowledge, such as word decoding, understanding syntactic and morphological structures, and deriving proper meanings from these structures in a given context. Bearing the simple view of reading, the primary goal of this study is to explore whether the split presentation of Chinese splittable compounds influences the recognition of the compounds in second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension, and how the reading skills, i.e., word decoding and linguistic comprehension, cooperate to complete this reading comprehension task. Splittable compounds (SCs) in Chinese are typically verbs composed of two constituents with limited separability. The separable property of SCs and their vague morpho-syntactic status are supposed to cause difficulties for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds. Especially for those whose native language manifests lexical integrity, the split presentation of the compounds may invite the L2 Chinese readers to process them with a mechanism different from that for their non-split forms. To the best of our knowledge, the efforts on investigating this issue are insufficient. In this study, 27 Spanish speaking L2 Chinese learners were invited to complete tasks including reading and interpreting 6 selected SCs in the split and non-split forms, rating their familiarities with each SC and reporting the syntactic category of the SCs based on their existing linguistic knowledge. The results, showed that the split presentation of SCs did cause challenges for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds in the reading process, regardless of their Chinese proficiencies. The L2 Chinese participants performed significantly worse in recognizing split SCs in salient Verb-Object structures than recognizing those in unsalient Verb-Object structures. These findings underscore the importance of linguistic comprehension in L2 Chinese in-text word reading comprehension and suggest words as the basic processing units.

Existence and consequences of dormant features: Evidence from L2 acquisition of Chinese object ellipsis

The current study investigates second language acquisition of Chinese object ellipsis to probe the development of features transferred from learners’ native language without robust confirming or disconfirming evidence in the second language (L2) input. It is argued that Chinese allows object ellipsis licensed by a verb with a [VCase] feature but not by a verb with a [Vnon-Case] feature. In contrast, Korean allows object ellipsis to be licensed by both types of verbs, whilst English prohibits both. An acceptability judgement task was conducted among first language (L1) English and L1 Korean L2 Chinese learners from elementary to advanced levels, with the results showing that the [Vnon-Case] feature was assembled in the Chinese grammars of English and Korean elementary L2 learners; however, it gradually lost its vigour and licensing power for object ellipsis in intermediate L2 grammars and was successfully removed from licensing object ellipsis in advanced L2 grammars. These findings support predictions by Yuan regarding a feature’s dormant status and modify Yuan’s predictions regarding a dormant feature’s consequences.

Effects of L1 Transfer Are Profound, Yet Native-Like Processing Strategy Is Attainable: Evidence From Advanced Learners’ Production of Complex L2 Chinese Structures

English as a verb-medial language has a short-before-long preference, whereas Korean and Japanese as verb-final languages show a long-before-short preference. In second language (L2) research, little is known regarding how L1 processing strategies affect the ultimate attainment of target structures. Existing work has shown that native speakers of Chinese strongly prefer to utter demonstrative-classifier (DCL) phrases first in subject-extracted relatives (DCL-SR-N) and DCLs second in object-extracted relatives (OR-DCL-N). But it remains unknown whether L2 learners with typologically different language backgrounds are able to acquire native-like strategies, and how they deviate from native speakers or even among themselves. Using a phrase-assembly task, we investigated advanced L2-Chinese learners whose L1s were English, Korean, and Japanese, because English lacks individual classifiers and has postnominal relative clause (RC), whereas Korean and Japanese have individual classifiers and prenominal RCs. Results showed that the English and Korean groups deviated from the native controls’ asymmetric pattern, but the Japanese group approximated native-like performance. Furthermore, compared to the English group, the Korean and Japanese groups favored the DCL-second configuration in SRs and ORs. No differences were found between the Korean and Japanese groups. Overall, our findings suggest that L1 processing strategies play an overarching role in L2 acquisition of asymmetric positioning of DCLs in Chinese RCs.

The Predictive Role of Grapho-Morphological Knowledge in Reading Comprehension for Beginning-Level L2 Chinese Learners

Reading comprehension entails a set of distinct, yet interdependent cognitive, linguistic, and nonlinguistic processes. Previous second language (L2) Chinese studies have identified significant and positive impacts of grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and subcharacter (radical) levels on passage reading comprehension; however, little is known regarding how early L2 grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and radical levels jointly predict later L2 reading comprehension. This study aimed to fill this gap. One hundred and five beginning-level L2 Chinese collegiate learners were recruited, and completed two character-related and two radical-related tasks in Week 8, as well as one reading comprehension tasks in Week 18. The main findings, based on correlational and path analyses, suggested that L2 Chinese learners’ early character-level and radical-level grapho-morphological knowledge significantly predicted later reading comprehension, yet the interrelations among grapho-morphological knowledge at the character and radical levels were complex. Path analyses identified direct and indirect paths from early character-level grapho-morphological knowledge to later reading comprehension, as well as indirect paths from early radical-level grapho-morphological knowledge to later reading comprehension. Methodological and pedagogical implications for L2 Chinese reading research and practices are discussed.

Morphological Awareness in L2 Chinese Reading Comprehension: Testing of Mediating Routes

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

Locative phrase and descriptive discourse in L2 Chinese

This study examines the way in which French-speaking learners of L2 Chinese construct a type of discourse called static spatial description. It involves the analysis of an oral corpus collected from two groups of native speakers of Chinese and French, and two groups of learners of L2 Chinese at two proficiency levels (low and intermediate). The data collected consist of the description of a poster. The results show that linguistic devices used in Chinese and French to encode the locative phrase and its syntactic functions have an impact on the presence and placement of the locative in utterances encoding spatial localization. These properties in turn influence the way in which the informational content develops across the utterances in the discourse. There is a clear development of proficiency between the two L2 groups. However, intermediate learners are not yet able to organize information on the discourse level like native Chinese speakers do.

The influence of L1 translation familiarity on the acquisition of L2 Chinese antonyms

As a partial replication of Tagashira, Kida, and Hoshino (2010), the present study examined first language (L1) translation familiarity effect on second language (L2) antonym acquisition among English-speaking intermediate-level Chinese learners. Fifteen students learned 15 antonymous pairs with familiar or unfamiliar L1 translations and completed two multiple-choice posttests. Their learning strategies were also collected. Results showed (a) a delayed L1 familiarity effect, (b) better retention and lower interference of L2 pairs with familiar L1 translations, (c) low retention of L2 pairs with unfamiliar L1 translations for both words, and (d) more orthographic elaboration strategies employed. The findings suggest that L2 instructors present antonyms in pairs, avoid providing a single, unfamiliar L1 translation, and encourage the use of orthographic elaboration strategies.