Topic prominence in Chinese EFL learners' interlanguage

• Authors: Shaopeng Li , Lianrui Yang
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present study aims to investigate the general characteristics of topicprominent typological interlanguage development of Chinese learners of English in terms of acquiring subject-prominent English structures from a discourse perspective. Topic structures mainly appear in Chinese discourse in the form of topic chains (Wang, 2002; 2004). The research target are the topic chain, which is the main topic-prominent structure in Chinese discourse, and zero anaphora, which is the most common topic anaphora in the topic chain. Two important findings emerged from the present study. First, the characteristics of Chinese topic chains are transferrable to the interlanguage of Chinese EFL learners, thus resulting in overgeneralization of the zero anaphora. Second, the interlanguage discourse of Chinese EFL learners reflects a change of the second language acquisition process from topic-prominence to subject-prominence, thus lending support to the discourse transfer hypothesis.

Keywords

EN

topic prominence; subject prominence; topic chain; zero anaphora; discourse transfer; English

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 109-125

Dates

cover

2014-03

Contributors

author

Shaopeng Li

• Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

author

Lianrui Yang

• Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/ssllt.2014.4.1.6