In this paper, all kinds of fictive motion instances are taken as a construction. Based on a 1systematic linguistic analysis of both English and Chinese fictive motion constructions (hereinafter “FMC”), the present study investigates L2 acquisition of English FMCs by Chinese EFL learners with different levels of English proficiency. All together, 80 Chinese EFL learners and 15 native speakers of English were recruited to participate in the empirical study. The research results show that the Chinese EFL learners performed best on acquiring both the syntactic and the semantic properties of FMCs’ Figure,Path, Manner and Duration of Motion in order accordingly and that the high-level Chinese EFL learners performed significantly better than the low-level counterparts on their acquisition of both the syntactic and the semantic properties of Figure, Path and Manner, while they did similarly on both the syntactic and the semantic properties of Duration of Motion. Moreover,it further indicates that even the high-level Chinese EFL learners were not able to reach the level of the native speakers. Finally, it is surprisingly revealed that even the native speakers of English did have some trouble coping with both the syntactic and the semantic properties of Duration of Motion with the hypothetical motion (an FMC subtype).
ZHONG Shu-Neng, HUANG Rui-Fang. L2 Acquisition of English Fictive Motion Constructions by Chinese EFL Learners[J]. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice. 2017, 158(1): 10