藏族学生三语的习得过程中句法负迁移现象分析以河北师范大学附属民族学院为例

1、分类号：H3110710-2009113017硕士学位论文藏族学生 三语习得 过程中旬 法负迁移 现象分析-以河北师范大学附属民族学院为例许宁导师姓名职称刘宇副教授外国语言学及应用语言学申请学位 级别 硕士学科专业 名称论文提交日期2012年5月29日论文答辩日期2012年6月8日学位授予单位长安大学The Analysis of Negative Syntactic Transfer inTibetan Students Third Language Acquisition-A Survey from College for Nationalities of HebeiNormal Univ

2、ersityA Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of MasterCandidate :Xu NingSupervisor :Prof. Liu YuChang an University, Xi an, ChinaAcknowledgementsThere are many people I would like to thank for various reasonsFirst of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Liu YuWitho

3、ut her enthusiastic guidance and encouragement, this paperwould not be finished ontime. Her erudite knowledge, rigorous attitude towards scholarship, earnest working mannerand enterprising spirits have benefited me a lot. All of these willbe valuable wealth for mylifeSecondly, I am very grateful to

4、the teachers during the three-year postgraduate educationof my life. They are, Prof. Xu Yucheng, Prof. Li Minquan, Prof. HeXianzhong, Prof. YangDangling, Prof. Yan Xuan, Prof. Liu Shuhui, Prof. WangHongxiao. Their devotion to theteaching and career impressed me deeply. They set good examples for me

5、as a good teacherThirdly, I want to express my special thanks for my lovely Tibetan students. Withouttheir supports, I could not finish the paper so wellLast but not least, my thanks will be given to my parents and wife.It is their continuousencouragement and support that made my life completely and

6、 care freeAbstractThe theory of language transfer has been a hot issue in language acquisition andlanguage teaching since 1940s Odlin, 2001. In the earlier days,researches on languagetransfer involved bilinguals mainly studied the part played by thelearners acquired languagein their second language

7、acquisition. While in recent decades, moreand more languagelearners have acquired three or even more languages because of thesocial and economicdevelopment, which has aroused more and more concern for the cross-linguistic influence inthe Third Language Acquisition TLA. However, fewer studies in Chin

8、ahave been done onsyntactic transfer in TLA among Tibetan, Chinese and English. Thus,the present study is ofpractical significanceBased on Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysisand the theory of Transfer Analysisproposed by Carl James 2001, this study intends to find out the mostcommon syntacticerrors

9、 in Tibetan student s English learning and explore the phenomena of the negativesyntactic transfer from previously learned languages Tibetan as L1and Chinese as L2 to L3English. In light of this, this paper intends to answer the following three questions: 1 Whatare the most commonsyntactic errors ca

10、used by language transfer from Chinese and Tibetanin Tibetanstudents English learning?2Which language plays aleading role in theproductionof these errors,Chinese or Tibetan? 3Are there anydifferences or similaritiesconcerning syntactic transfer between Tibetan students at different English languagep

11、roficiency levels The participants were 85 Tibetan students at senior high school. All of them came to theinland cities after primary school, and their Chinese language proficiency improved so fastthat most of them could understand the instruction language Chinesein English class aftergraduating fro

12、m junior middle school. The research procedure was the following: 1 AWriting Task was given to the participants and the anomalous syntactic structures would becollected. 2 An English proficiency test wasgiven to the participants and the participantswhose scores were over 60 were assigned in the high

13、 proficiency group, while the otherparticipants were in low proficiency group; 3 A Translation Taskincluding 15 sentences inChinese and Tibetan on the anomalous syntactic structures with high frequency was given to Iboth of the two groups. Then the Error Analysis and Transfer Analysis were done base

14、d on theresults; 4 After the Translation Task, an Individual Interview wasgiven to 20 participantsselected from both groups in order to get a further study on the underlying reasons for thenegative syntactic transferIn general, this study detected the most commo syntactic errors in Tibetan studentsw

15、riting, and also yielded confirmative evidence for negative syntactic transfer. The roleplayed by Tibetan students second language Chinese is larger than that played by their firstlanguage Tibetan during the s tudents English learning. Besides, those almost omnipresenterrors madeby participants at l

16、ow proficiency level showedthat these participants seemed torely much more on their L2 Chinese, especially when they consideredthe English structuresmore difficult. The results of Translation Task showed that participants at high proficiencylevel would make fewer errors than those at low proficiency

17、 level in the use of ?there be structure, preposition and adverbs. However, they would make more errors in the use ofcopula be, especially in the use of relative clauses, which showed that even participants athigh proficiency level were under the influence of Chinese L2 in the production of Englishs

18、entencesKey words: Tibetan students; English Learning; Chinese; Tibetan;Third language acquisition;Syntactic transferII 摘要语言迁移自20世纪40年代问世以来，一直是语言习得和语言教学研究中 的热点Odlin,2001。起初，语言迁移主要以双语学习者为研究对象，研究语言学 习者已有的语言知识在第二语言习得过程中的影响。近些年来，随着时代的发展，三语甚至多语学习者逐渐增多，三语习得中的语言迁移问题引起了越来越多研究者的关注，但是国内对藏语、汉语和英语这三种语言之间的句法迁移现象

19、的研究还非常有限。本研究以对比分析、错误分析和Carl James2001提出的迁移分析理论为基础,试图找出 母语为藏语的藏族高中生在英语学习过程中母语 （藏语）和二语（汉语）在三语（英语） 错误句法的产生过程中的作用和影响。在此基础上，本文试图回答以下三个问题：（1）藏族学生英语学习过程中受第一语言（藏语）和第二语言（汉语）迁移影响产生的主 要句法错误种类分别是哪些？（2 ）哪种语言在这些英语错误句法产 生过程中占主导地位，汉语还是藏语？ （3）不同英语水平的藏族学生在英语错误句法产生过程中有何相同或不同之处？本项研究选取河北师范大学附属民族学院85名藏族高二学生为研究对象，他们小学毕业就来

20、到内地西藏班求学，并且在进入高中学习之前大部分学生基本 上能够正确理解英语课堂上白教学媒介语2a语。具体研究过程如下：（i）收集所有学生 的命题作文，并对其中出现的句法错误进行分类（2）错误类型收集完毕之后，对所有学生进行英语水平测试，得分在60分以上的学生组成高水平组,得分在60分之下的 学生为低水平组；(3 )请两组受试者将以收集到的高频错误类型为主 的十五个汉语及藏语句子翻译成英语，并对翻译结果进行错误分析及迁移分析；(4) 最后 从两组受试者中分别随机抽取10名学生进行个人访谈，以进一步了解迁移现象产生的原因。经研究发现，藏族学生在英语学习过程当中所受的第二语言(汉语)的影响要大于他们

21、的第一语言(藏语)的影响。止匕外，句法错误在低水平 组 中较为普 遍，表明这些学生在英语学习过程中更多的依赖汉语 。高水平组在there be结构，介词、 副词的使用过程中错误率要远低于低水平组，但其在be动词的使用过程中错误率较高， 特别是在关系从句的使用上和低水平组的出错率非常接近。关键词：藏族学生；英语学习；汉语；藏语；三语习得；句法迁移IIITable of ContentsIntroduction 11.1Research TOC o 1-5 h z Background 1PurposeoftheResearch .31.3SignificanceoftheResearch.3Ou

22、tlineofthePaper.4LiteratureReview 5DefinitiononLanguageTransfer 52.1.1What isLanguage Transfer.52.1.2Types of Language Transfer 6ViewsonLanguageTransfer .82.2.1 TheBehaviorist View.8TheMentalistView .9TheCognitiveView .102.3 Studies onThird Language Acquisition.112.3.1CharacteristicsofThirdLanguageA

23、cquisition .112.3.2 TLA versus TOC o 1-5 h z SLA .12StudiesonTLAabroad .13StudiesonTLAinChina 15TheoreticalFoundations .18ContrastiveAnalysis.18ErrorAnalysis.18TransferAnalysis .20Methodology.22ResearchQuestions22Participants.224.3Instruments .24Writing TOC o 1-5 h z Task .24TranslationTask .25IV4.3

24、.3Individual Interview 26ResearchProcedures .27DataAnalysis.27Chapter5ResultsandFindings 295.1 Resultsof Writing Task.29Syntactic Errors Collected from WritingTask.29A Contrastive Analysis on the Five SyntacticStructures .305.2 Error Analysis of the Results ofTranslation Task36 5.3Transfer Analysis

25、ofthe Results of Translation Task .41TheInfluenceofL1.435.3.2TheInfluenceofL2 .435.3.3 Other Factors Resulting in Production of AnomalousStructures .445.4ResultsofIndividualInterview .45Chapter 6Discussion and Conclusions .46Discussion.466.2Conclusions.496.3PedagogicalImplications 506.4Limitationsan

26、d Some Suggestions for FutureStudies.51Bibliography53WritingTask .57TranslationTask 58Appendix3:IndividualInterview59QuestionsVList of TablesTable 4.1 Results of English Proficiency TOC o 1-5 h z Test .23Results of Independent-samples T-test on EnglishProficiencyTestofTwoGroups.24Frequency of Eleven

27、 Types of SyntacticErrors 29Prepositional Phrase ?in + noun : Di fference amongTibetan,ChineseandEnglish 31Copula Be as pure/auxiliary Verb: Difference amongTibetan, Chinese and Englishinpresenttense32Difference on the placementof adverbs among Tibetan,Chinese and English.34Difference in expressing

28、the existential and possessivefunction among Tibetan,andChinese34EnglishDifferent use of relative clauses among Tibetan, Chinese TOC o 1-5 h z and English 35ResultofTranslationTask.36Result of Transfer Analysis: Percentage of participants who made syntactic errors inthefiveselectedstructures 42Table

29、 6.1 Independent-samples T-test on anomalous syntactic structures between students atdifferentproficiencylevels 48VIListofAbbreviationsCA?Contrastive AnalysisCAH?Contrastive Analysis HypothesisCLI?cross-linguistic influenceEA?Error AnalysisHSK?China s Hanyu Shuiping KaoshiIL-interlanguageL1?first la

30、nguageL2?second languageL3?third languageSLA?second language acquisitionPETS?Public English Test SystemTLA?third language acquisitionTL?target languageTA?Transfer Analysis VII长安大学硕士学位论文Chapter 1 IntroductionResearch BackgroundLanguage Transfer in Second and Third Language AcquisitionThe theory of la

31、nguage transfer has been a hot issue in language acquisition andlanguage teaching since 1940s. However, within the last few decades, the importance oflanguage transfer has been reassessed several times in second language learning. In the 1950s,language was the most important factor to be considered

32、in theories of second languagelearning and second language teaching. In the 1960s, the importanceof language transferwaned as the errors of learners were not considered as the evidenceof language transfer but ofthe creative construction process. II Some researchers even denied the existence of langu

33、agetransfer in language studies. However, since the late 1970s, the role of transfer in secondlanguage learning and teaching has been widely acknowledged. Transfer can take place notonly in all the linguistic factors, but also in non-linguistic factors, such as social, cultural andpersonal factors i

34、n language learningand use. Ausubel, Novak &Hanesian 1978 believe thatit isn t possible for all the language lea rners to start learningfrom the very beginning. Everylanguage learning in the world is influenced by the past cognitive structure. Gass & Selinker1992 point out that anyone who wants to o

35、ffer sufficient interpretation of second languagelearning must take language transfer into consideration. Thelanguage transfer theory hasdeveloped for a long time that RodEllis 1999 puts forward a view that the learners firstlanguage plays an important role in the second language acquisitionHowever,

36、 with the rapid development of economy and society, when language learnersare learning a new language, they may have already known two or more languages. Learners prior knowledge of their first and second languages must have influence on their thirdlanguage acquisition TLA. Thus, during the last two

37、 decades, transfer during third languageacquisition has been attracting great attention from linguists and has become a new focus inthe study of cross-linguistic influence CLI. Question arises as to how the learne rs first andsecond languages influence the third language acquisition. Studies have sh

38、own that both thelanguage learners native and non-native languages can become sources of influence when1 Chapter 1 Introductionacquiring a new language Hammarberg, 2001. Dewaele 1998 finds that during the thirdlanguage production, language learners always unintentionally produce interlanguage formst

39、hat consist of either partially or completely of L2 formsWith empirical studies, researchers have testified language transfer on different aspects,such as phonology, syntax, discourse, semantics and so on. Studieson syntactic level aremainly about word order and relative clauses involving bilinguall

40、anguage learners who havethe same first language. Some studies on language transfer also concern about trilinguallearners, while the languages acquired by the learners belong to the Indo-European family. Upto now, there are few studies on syntactic transfer being involvedin English, Chinese andTibet

41、an1.1.2 English as a Third Language for Students in TibetanSchoolsChina is a united multi-ethnic nation of 56 ethnic groups, the largest being the Han. Theother 55 ethnic groups are called ethnic minorities. The Tibetan isone of these 55 ethnicminorities, with nearly 3 million Tibetans The populatio

42、n of Tibetan autonomous region wasreported to be 2, 810, 000 in 2006, for details, see /0./view/9431.htmDue to historical and geographical factors, Tibetan autonomous region has legged behindother regions in China. Many things should be considered in order to catch up with otheradvanced regions. The

43、re is no doubt that education plays a veryimportant role in thedevelopment of the Tibetan. So, our country opened the first group of outback Tibetan schoolsin 1985. The author s school, College for Nationalities of HebeiNormal University, is one ofthese schoolsStudents in outback Tibetan schools com

44、e to the inlandcities after primary school, andstart English learning in junior high schools. The Tibetan students case of learning English israther complex. Besides Tibetan language, they begin to learn Chinese, which is their secondlanguage, in primary school. Tibetan students start learning Engli

45、sh by means of Chinese injunior high schools. Wecan reasonably conclude that Tibetan students would have greatdifficulty in learning English. The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of theGermanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. AlthoughChinese and Tibetanbelong to Si

46、no-Tibetan family of languages, they have little in commonwith the development 2长安大学硕士学位论文All these may also increase the difficulty for Tibetan students tolearn English1.2 Purpose of the ResearchCompared with students of Han nationality, Tibetan students are poorer in English. Inord er to improve Tibetan students English, the researchers and English teachers should attachmore importance to discover problems that these students have inEnglish learning, findsolutions to the problems, and thus better English teachingThis paper aims to explore the phenomenon of language transfer in