A Corpus-based Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Use of Transitive Constructions with Neutral Participants

Abstract

Linguistic studies suggest that transitivity is a prototypical concept which is gradable, and different types of transitive constructions reflect different degrees of transitivity. As such, the flexibility of transitive constructions is difficult for Chinese EFL learners. The author seeks to study how Chinese EFL learners use a particular type of transitive construction, those with neutral participants (TCNP), to reveal Chinese EFL learners’ conceptual features in using transitive constructions. The author selected three verbs in the study: enter, join and reach, then conducted a series of comparisons of their uses between a Chinese EFL learner corpus and a native learner. The author found that Chinese EFL learners’ uses are different in a number of ways: they tend to rely more on the transitive pattern and use less intransitive and passive voice pattern, to use more animate entities as subjects, especially the first person pronouns, but to use more inanimate entities as objects. However, in the comparisons between different levels of Chinese EFL learners, we found that all Chinese EFL learners use these verbs similarly with no regard to their English levels, indicating that Chinese EFL learners have no conceptual change in English. The author argues that the constraining effect of the prototypical transitive construction leads to the different uses of TCNPs by Chinese EFL learners in comparison with native speakers.