 SLA  Acquisition of Chinese by English speakers  他 打 碎 了 花瓶。  ta da sui le huaping.  he hit broken le vase

 Few research on the acquisition of Chinese resultatives  English-speaking students have difficulty in acquiring it  Translation problem

 Cheng & Huang (1994)  Four types of resultatives in Chinese: › Transitive › Ergative › Unergative › Causative

 Chen, L. & Oller, J. W. (2008). The use of passives and alternatives in English by Chinese speakers. Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar, 385–416.  Cheng, L. L. & Huang, J. (1994). On the argument structure of resultative compounds. Interdisciplinary Studies on Language and Language Change,  Park, K. & Lakshmanan, U. (2007). The L2 acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in English resultatives. Proceedings of the…Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development  Tai, J. (2003). Cognitive relativism: Resultative construction in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 4(2),  Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37(2),

 1. Is there a significant difference in performance between the four groups, the intermediate group, intermediate-high group, advanced group, and control group?  2. Is there a significant difference in performance, within the four groups, between the four different resultative construction types: unergative, transitive, ergative and causative?  3. How did learners’ L1 influence their acquisition?

 55 students in OU › 20 second year students---intermediate › 15 third year students—intermediate-high › 5 fourth year students---advanced › 15 native Chinese speakers---control

 10 short video clips › 7 resultatives › 3 distracters  Grammaticality Judgment Test › 20 resultatives › 10 distracters › Provide both characters and pinyin › Designed based on intermediate level

 1. Pilot Study to both Chinese and English speakers.  Instruments will be revised  2. Participants describe the video clips orally › Audio-recorded › No time limit; as many sentences as possible  3. Grammaticality judgment test › Write down whether they are sure or not

 Qualitative Data › Alternative expressions › Error patterns › Most and least likely wrongly judged sentences  Quantitative Data  Number of grammatical and ungrammatical resultatives  Accuracy in judgment

 Qualitative Data Analysis › Transcribe › Label based on the four types › Compare substitute and error patterns with English resultatives  Quantitative Data Analysis › Frequency be counted and compared among different groups › Compare “scores” › ANOVA

 Limited number of participants  Cohort effect  Instruments are limited by the intermediate level  Participants may not be representitive

 1. Learners of Chinese use resultatives less frequently. But There might be no significant difference in grammaticality judgment test.  2. Learners of Chinese will have less difficulty in acquiring the transitive type of resultatives, comparing to the other three.  3. Advanced learners will use resultatives more native-like.