Learning and unlearning object drop in anaphoric and non-anaphoric contexts in L2 English

• Main Author: Lee, Chi Wai
• Published: University of Newcastle upon Tyne 2014
• Subjects: 428.2
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.635018

Chinese allows object drop in contexts where there is an antecedent (anaphoric contexts), where English generally requires an overt object pronoun (e.g. Mary’s bike is broken. I am going to repair *(it) for her). In non-anaphoric contexts, however, English allows a null cognate object e as in Mary reads [e] every night whereas Chinese requires an overt cognate object (kan-shu, literally ‘read-book’). Previous SLA studies indicate Chinese learners of L2 English have problems unlearning anaphoric object drop in English, generally ascribed to effects of L1 transfer. This study brings a novel perspective to the L2 learnability problem by incorporating Cheng and Sybesma’s (1998) proposed negative correlation between the two rules: that allowing object drop in anaphoric contexts is incompatible with allowing object drop in non-anaphoric contexts.