The acquisition of English passive constructions by Mandarin speakers : a developmental perspective

Abstract

The acquisition and the felicitous use of discourse-pragmatic devices is an important milestone for L2 learners. This study utilises Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998; Pienemann, Di Biase, & Kawaguchi, 2005) as the language development framework to investigate the acquisition of English passive constructions by Mandarin L1 learners of English L2. The study aims to investigate the development of various English passive constructions in the interlanguage of Mandarin L1 learners of English L2. The hypotheses are that learners at lower stages of development will use only the active construction, and that passive constructions will be more effortful for learners to process due to the greater processing loads involved in the required argument grammatical function mapping. Furthermore, it is hypothesised that learners' development of various constructions under the passive voice category will proceed in a sequential fashion.

Date of Award	2010
Original language	English