L2 acquisition of classifier reduplication in Chinese

Abstract

This article investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of classifier reduplication in Chinese by Korean speakers and English speakers. Unlike the individuation function of simple classifiers, reduplicated classifiers express plurality. Yi-Cl-Cl encodes abundant plural and is associated with [plural, abundant] features, while Cl-Cl encodes distributive plural and is associated with [plural, distributive] features. Thirty-two English-speaking and thirty-five Korean-speaking learners of Chinese at advanced and intermediate Chinese proficiency levels were tested using a grammaticality judgment task and a truth value judgment task. The group and individual results show that, though great acquisition difficulties were encountered, both English and Korean speakers can eventually acquire the features associated with classifier reduplication. This empirical study contributes to the L2 theory of feature reassembly, by looking into the process of feature reassembly when the linguistic property is morphologically and semantically complex, and form-meaning transparency is low. This study also provides new data on the L2 acquisition of classifiers and plurality.