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Pedagogical Linguistics: Online-First Articles

A revisit of three hypotheses about second language development of English relative clauses

A corpus-based study of written Hong Kong English

ORCID logo | The University of Hong Kong
Cantonese-English learners in Hong Kong confront with substantial difficulty in development of English relative clauses. This study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data of written Hong Kong English. wh relatives and that relatives in the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English were identified. Frequencies of occurrence of distinct types of relative clauses in the Hong Kong component were compared to evaluate whether predictions of Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, Kuno’s (1974) Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis, and Hamilton’s (1994) Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are supported by the corpus data respectively. Results indicate that the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis is supported by data of written Hong Kong English whilst the other two hypotheses are partially supported only. Hypotheses supported by corpus data of written Hong Kong English are suggested to inform English language education in Hong Kong by illuminating the instructional order of different types of English relative clauses.
Keywords: English relative clauses, Hong Kong English, corpus linguistics, second language development
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • L2 learning theories explaining development of English RCs
      • The behaviourist approach
      • The generative approach
      • The input-based emergentist approach
      • The functional approach
    • Hypotheses about L2 learners’ development of English RCs
      • Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH)
      • Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH)
      • Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH)
      • Comparison and contrast among the three hypotheses
    • Cantonese-English learners’ Development of English RCs
    • Research problem and question
  • Research methodology
    • Sample
    • Variables and instrumentation
    • Procedures
  • Results
    • Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH)
    • Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH)
    • Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH)
  • Discussion
    • Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH)
    • Perceptual difficulty Hypothesis (PDH)
    • Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis (SOHH)
  • Conclusion and limitations
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 19 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.23008.ng
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