A corpus-based analysis of Chinese relative clauses produced by Japanese and Thai learners

Abstract

Concerning the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs), studies on head-initial languages consistently reported a preference for subjectgapped RCs, but the issue of subject-object asymmetry is still a controversial one in research on the acquisition of RCs in head-final languages. Using written corpus data, this study investigated the second language production of RCs in Mandarin Chinese (Chinese) by Japanese-speaking and Thai-speaking learners with various proficiency levels. We first extracted the RCs produced by Japanese and Thai learners from the HKS Dynamic Composition Corpus, and coded head type and gap type for further analyses. The learners from the intermediate-level groups produced a significant number of error-free RCs, which suggests that the intermediate learners have already mastered Chinese RCs. Both Japanese and Thai learners exhibited a strong preference for the subject RCs, which is consistent with predictions that follow from the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) and the results of studies on head-initial languages. Our data also provided partial support for the Subject-Object Hierarchy (SOH). However, the size of the corpus was insufficient to exhaustively investigate the tested theories. More data are needed to examine the applicability of the NPAH and SOH hypotheses in L2 Chinese and in general.