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Article published In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 4:1 (2017) ► pp.1–21

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Chinese aspect marker -le and its acquisition by American English speakers

 | City University of Hong Kong
 | State University of New York
 | City University of Hong Kong
Published online: 4 September 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.4.1.01li
Abstract
This study investigates the functions of the perfective marker -le and its acquisition by native speakers of American English from the perspective of the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen, Roger W., & Yasuhiro Shirai. (1994). Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles . Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 161, 133–156 Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). We set out to test the predicted order regarding four verb categories in terms of their frequencies of -le marking. Our results confirmed that -le was most frequently used with achievement verbs by learners, but revealed deviated patterns of distribution in other categories when they were compared with those of native speakers of Chinese. We discussed our data further from the perspective of prototypicality, and provide pedagogical implications to Chinese as a foreign language.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The perfective marker -le
    • 2.2Verb categories in Chinese
    • 2.3Interaction between -le and verb categories
    • 2.4Acquisition of aspect in Chinese: L1
    • 2.5Acquisition of aspect in Chinese: L2
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Data collection
    • 3.3Data coding
    • 3.4Results
    • 3.5Discussions
  • 4.Conclusions and pedagogical implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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Li, Xiaoshi, Robert Bayley, Xinye Zhang & Yaqiong Cui
2022. An investigation of the use of the multifunctional particle ‑le by second language learners of Mandarin Chinese. In Variation in Second and Heritage Languages [Studies in Language Variation, 28], ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
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