This section concerns the issue on the cross-cultural differences in cognition of language speakers. As many linguists (e.g. Whorf 1956; Bloom 1981, 1984) suggest, distinct perceptions of cultural conventions, reinforced by the structural characteristics of the learner’s L1, often engender a failure in their L2 learning. Tai (2003), for example, claims that the result part of an event would be more salient to Mandarin-speaking people than to English-speaking people based on the cross-linguistic difference between Mandarin and English regarding the expression of the result of an event. The results of the subjects’ interpretations of RVC sentences will be presented first, followed by the discussion of the results.
Presented in Table 4-11 are the frequencies of the result interpretation response obtained from the mid, high and control groups, each comprising 20 people. As indicated in Chapter Three, the SI task was divided into two sets of questions. Each set was composed of six items divided into three groups, two for each type of RVC.
Hence, the highest frequency of the result interpretation response for each type of
RVC is 40 and that for each group is also 40.
Table 4-11. Frequencies of the result interpretation response for Act-R, Sem-R and Sta-R RVCs
Group
Type of RVC Mid High Control
17 (42.5%) 28 (70%) Activity-Result RVC
45 (56.25%)
40 (100%)
19 (47.5%) 21 (52.5%) Semelfactive-Result RVCs
40 (50%)
38 (95%)
36 (90%) 36 (90%)
State-Result RVCs
72 (90%)
37 (92.5%)
The results in Table 4-11 indicate that the English learners’ and Chinese controls’
performances on Sta-R RVCs were nearly equivalent. In the Sta-R RVCs, we obtained 37 result interpretation responses out of 40 from the control group. The frequency of the result interpretation response received from the experimental groups was 36 out of 40. No significant difference was found between the experimental group and the control group (the Chi-Square-value=.624, p=.732), suggesting that the L2 learners’
perceptual saliency towards the result of a state which causes a change of state (i.e., a result) was similar to the Chinese controls’. This also has the implication that the L2
learners were aware of the property that the result component is the semantic focus of the Sta-R RVC. The finding that the test questions with the Sta-R RVCs were comparatively ‘easy’ for our English subjects is not particularly surprising since it has been found in the GJ task that the learners did well on the Sta-R RVCs.
As the frequency totals recorded in Table 4-11 suggest, fewer L2 learners gave the result interpretation to Act-R RVCs and to Sem-R RVCs in comparison with Sta-R RVCs. As predicted, the experimental groups exhibited a significantly lower frequency of the result interpretation response than the control group (Chi-Square-value=40.481, p=.000*** for the Act-R RVC; Chi-Square-value=29.237, p=.000*** for the Sem-R RVC), implying that English learners attended less to the result of the event as compared with native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Tai’s (2003) theoretical claim on the cross-linguistic difference between Mandarin and English speakers in their perceptual saliency to the result of the event is thus supported by our empirical data. In addition, the results are consistent with our prediction that the learners’ performance on the Sta-R RVCs and on Act-/Sem-R RVCs would not be the same. A significant difference of the result interpretation response was found between the two experimental groups for the Act-R RVCs (Chi-Square-value=11.815, p=.003*). But for the Sem-R RVC, the group effect was not significant (Chi-Square-value=.286, p=.867). The findings indicate that with the growth of L2
proficiency, the learners showed progress on the Act-R RVCs, but they failed to show
frequency of the result interpretation response obtained from each group is 20.
Table 4-12. Frequency and percentage of result interpretation for Act-R RVC Group
Table 4-13. Frequency and percentage of result interpretation for Sem-R RVC Group
‘Wangwu kicked that bottle; that bottle
fell as a result.’ 7 (17.5%)
The frequency totals displayed in Tables 4-12 and 4-13 suggest that the learners’
performance on the Act-R and Sem-R RVCs differed from sentence to sentence. The frequency of the result interpretation for the Act-R RVC pao-diu ‘run-lose’ is much higher than that for the Act-R RVC tui-kai ‘push-open’; the frequency of the former is four times that of the latter (f=36, 90% vs. f=9, 22.5%). Similarly, the frequency total for the Sem-R RVC ke-xing ‘cough-wake’ is very high, the frequency being 33 (82.5%); however, that of the result interpretation to the other Sem-R RVC ti-dao
‘kick-fall’ is relatively low, only 7 (17.5%). We were surprised at the disparity in the frequencies for the two test questions with the Act-R RVC, or Sem-R RVC: since the two questions were designed for the same RVC type, the learners’ performances on the two test items should be similar. The comparison among the four test sentences was made to find out why the learners did not sense the semantic feature that the result predication expresses the main idea of the sentence with the RVCs tui-kai
‘push-open’ and ti-dao ‘run-lose’.
In the comparison among the four test questions, we found that the internal structure of the RVC played a certain role in the learners’ judgment on the focal expression of an RVC sentence. To be more specific, we discovered that the learners tended to perceive that the result part of pao-diu ‘run-lose’ and ke-xing ‘cough-wake’,
the two constituents of which are both intransitive verbs, constitutes the semantic focus of the RVC, while in sentences with the RVCs tui-kai ‘push-open’ and ti-dao
‘kick-fall’, formed with a transitive verb as the first constituent and an intransitive verb as the second, the learners considered the action expression as the center predication of the sentences. This is evidenced by the results in Tables 4-12 and 4-13, which indicate that the total frequency of the result interpretation observed for sentences with the Act-R RVC tui-kai ‘push-open’, which is composed of a transitive verb as V1 and an intransitive verb as V2, was much lower than that for sentences with the Act-R RVC pao-diu ‘run-lose’, the elements of which are both intransitive verbs (f =9, 22.5% vs. f =36, 90%). Likewise, the RVC ke-xing ‘cough-awake’
enjoyed a higher frequency of the result interpretation than the RVC ti-dao ‘kick-fall’
(f =33, 82.5% vs. f =7, 17.5%), though the two RVCs are Sem-R RVCs.
4.4 Summary
In this chapter, the results of the grammaticality judgment and sentence
interpretation tasks are reported and discussed in respect to the research purposes. The results showed that the English learners performed differently on the three RVC types.
The learners did best on RVCs formed with a State and a resultative morpheme while they performed worst on the Sem-R RVCs. In the GJ task, it was found that the learners’ poor performance on the Sem-R RVC can be accounted for with their
unfamiliarity with components of the RVC. The results also revealed that the learners had the knowledge that the result component constitutes the semantic focus of RVCs and treated the Sem-R and Act-R RVCs as Achievements-- the Sem-R RVC was treated as Achievements with the preliminary stage and the Act-R RVC, Achievements without the preliminary.
Moreover, the findings suggest that the learners’ L1 played an important role in the L2 learning of RVCs. In the GJ task, we found that the compatibility between the meaning of the Achievement with the preliminary stage and the English progressive misled the learners into considering that Sem-R RVCs could appear with the Mandarin imperfective aspect marker zhengzai. In the SI task, the L2 learners appealed to the linguistic property of English Achievements in their perception of the semantic property that when an action-result RVC co-occurs with the adverb chayidianr ‘almost’ in a sentence, only the result interpretation is deducible from the
sentence. Besides, the findings suggest that in an event consisting of both an action and a result, the English attended more to the action than to the result part of the event.
As to the state with a result, the learners pay more attention to the result part of the state.
Chapter Five Conclusion
In this chapter, we will first summarize the research findings. Then, we will
present the linguistic and pedagogical implications of the present study. Finally, we will discuss limitations of this study and propose suggestions for further research.