Topic-comment constructions in L1-Chinese learners' English

Given the typological differences betweenChinese and English, the question ariseswhether and how topic-prominent (TP) featuresaffect the English development of L1-Chineselearners. The present study explores thisquestion by examining the non-target-likestructures surfacing in learners' interlanguage.200 essays were randomly selected from theSpoken and Written English Corpus of ChineseLearners, taking two factors into consideration:English proficiency level and production form(written and oral). One major manifestation ofinterlanguage structures (i.e. topic-commentconstructions, categorized into six types) wastagged, and the processes by which thestructures are formed were analyzed to explorethe relative difficulty of unlearning them. Thestudy revealed that as learners' Englishproficiency improves, the incidence ofstructures with TP features decreases(intermediate learners: 3.77%; advanced:2.30%), approximating their incidence in thesubject-prominent language English, fewerstructures with TP features are found in thelearners' oral (4.76%) than their written (1.31%)production, and the frequencies of six types oftopic-comment construction differ markedly. Inlight of our findings, we propose a hierarchy forthe difficulty of unlearning TP features.