Acquiring the polysemous adverb HAI in Chinese by English-speaking, Japanese-speaking, and Korean-speaking CSL
learners
Using corpus analysis and error analysis, this study investigates English-speaking, Japanese-speaking, and
Korean-speaking Chinese learners’ acquisition of various meanings of hai in Mandarin Chinese, including its
temporal meaning ‘still, yet’ as well as its abundant atemporal meanings involving addition, comparison and counter-expectation.
We found a preponderance of misselection errors across the three groups of learners. The next most common error type for the
Japanese-speaking and Korean-speaking learners was omission, while omission and over-inclusion were equally challenging for the
English-speaking learners. Further analysis of errors in misselection shows that many learners failed to distinguish the temporal
hai from the atemporal haishi required in a concessive sentence for the counter-expectation
meaning.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Various uses of hai
- 2.1Temporal hai
- 2.2Additive hai
- 2.3Comparative hai
- 2.4Moderate hai
- 2.5Counter-expectation (CE) hai
- 2.6Derivations of various uses of hai
- 3.Data collection and classification
- 3.1The data
- 3.2The analytical framework
- 3.3Identification and categorization of errors
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1The uses of hai in the data of the English-speaking, Japanese-speaking, and Korean-speaking CSL learners
- 4.2Errors made by the CSL learners
- 4.2.1Errors made by the English-speaking CSL learners
- 4.2.2Errors made by the Japanese-speaking CSL learners
- 4.2.3Errors made by the Korean-speaking CSL learners
- 4.3Overall discussions
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
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