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INVESTIGATING CHINESE SPEAKERS’ ACQUISITION OF
TELICITY IN ENGLISH
by
Bin Yin
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LINGUISTICS)
May 2012
Copyright 2012 Bin Yin
Object Description
| Title | Investigating Chinese speakers' acquisition of telicity in English |
| Author | Yin, Bin |
| Author email | binyin@usc.edu;yinkeith@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Linguistics |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2011-12-12 |
| Date submitted | 2012-03-08 |
| Date approved | 2012-03-08 |
| Restricted until | 2012-03-08 |
| Date published | 2012-03-08 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Kaiser, Elsi |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Simpson, Andrew Saltarelli, Mario |
| Abstract | This dissertation is concerned with Chinese speakers’ acquisition of telicity in L2 English. Telicity is a semantic notion having to do with whether an event has an inherent endpoint or not. Most existing work on L2 telicity is conceptualized within an L1-transfer framework and examines learning situations where L1 and L2 differ on whether and how the Direct Object plays a role in telicity computation (e.g., Slabakova 2000, 2001, 2005; Gabriele, 2010; Kaku-MacDonald, 2009). ❧ This dissertation is inspired by such prior work but explores additional issues by examining not only the role of the Direct Object, but also constructions where other elements in the sentence contribute to telicity, including the Goal PPs, Adjectival Resultatives, and the Locatum construction. A series of three sentence-rating experiments examined these constructions, and the results yield insights into the different factors affecting telicity acquisition: learnability (Chapter 2), transparency in form-meaning mapping (Chapter 3), and the role of underlying syntactic operations (Chapter 4). ❧ It was found that for native Mandarin speakers learning English, un-learning an L1-based but L2-incompatible telicity interpretation proved to be comparatively challenging, which can be attributed to the absence of negative evidence. Furthermore, even in situations where L1 and L2 do not differ in their telicity, participants were more likely to arrive at the correct telicity interpretation of a sentence in the L2 in situations where the construction encoding telicity was more transparent – in terms of its form-meaning mapping – than in situations where the construction was less so. Moreover, telicity was easier to learn when it was marked on the verb than when it was marked on the noun. Lastly, unlike what has been found for child learners (Hodgson, 2006, 2009, 2010), the L2 learners in this research did not show sensitivity to the differences between covert versus overt syntactic operations that are responsible for telicity computation. ❧ In sum, by investigating a wider range of constructions than has hitherto been examined, this dissertation shows that a multiplicity of factors (and not just the Direct Object) contribute to the acquisition of telicity. |
| Keyword | aspect; English; Mandarin; second language acquisition; telicity |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Yin, Bin |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume6/etd-YinBin-482.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Full text | INVESTIGATING CHINESE SPEAKERS’ ACQUISITION OF TELICITY IN ENGLISH by Bin Yin A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (LINGUISTICS) May 2012 Copyright 2012 Bin Yin |
