Boping Yuan | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | University of Cambridge
A substantial body of research has investigated null arguments in L2 Chinese, showing that they can be
native-like. However, recent linguistic research has demonstrated convincingly that some ‘missing’ arguments in Chinese should be
viewed not as ‘null’ arguments but as a result of movement and ellipsis. These advances necessitate a revaluation of the issue of
‘null’ arguments in previous L2 studies which largely overlooked the role of ellipsis in accounting for missing arguments in L2
Chinese. To fill the lacuna, this study recognises the above recent advances and examines whether missing objects in English
speakers’ L2 Chinese parallel sentences are a result of verb raising and VP ellipsis and are genuinely native-like. Results of a
picture-description task and an acceptability judgement task suggest that although L2ers, like native Chinese speakers, can accept
and produce missing objects in Chinese, their native-like performance is driven by mechanisms different from those of native
Chinese speakers (i.e., the missing objects are erroneously used as null objects in L2 Chinese). The findings advance our
understanding of L1 vs. L2 different mechanisms for phonetically unrealised objects in Chinese, suggesting that what looks
native-like in L2 may not necessarily be native-like.
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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