Corpus-based Research on Chinese Learners' Mother-tongue Influence on English Word Class Errors

Hailin Zhang

doi:10.54097/9qmdf085

Authors

Hailin Zhang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54097/9qmdf085

Keywords:

Corpus, Mother-tongue Transfer, Word Class Errors

Abstract

Errors are one of the linguistic characteristics of language learners. Due to the differences between English and Chinese, learners may transfer their mother-tongue "habits" to the learning of the target language, thus resulting in errors. This study, based on the learner corpus, examines the word class errors of Chinese students at different stages of English learning. Meanwhile, it focuses on adjectives to explore the impact of Sino-British typological differences on learners' vocabulary errors. The research findings indicate that the second-language word class errors first increase from few to many and then decrease from many to few with the improvement of learners' English proficiency. There are systematic errors in the acquisition of English adjective word class by Chinese learners, which are specifically manifested in two aspects: morphological changes and syntactic functions of word class. The above results are likely caused by mother-tongue transfer, which is influenced by the typological differences between English and Chinese during the second-language word class acquisition process. The results of this study verify the morphological consistency hypothesis, suggesting that Chinese students lack a clear awareness of English word class. It provides an empirical basis for promoting the development of second-language word class acquisition research and improving the efficiency of second-language word class teaching.

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