L2 Acquisition of the Mandarin Modal Verb YAO by L1 ...

臺灣華語教學研究 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language 總第 12 期 Vol.12 (2016.06)：99-132

L2 Acquisition of the Mandarin Modal Verb YAO by L1 English Speakers*1

Jen-i Li, Miao-Ling Hsieh Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University Abstract This paper examines the meanings of the modal verb yào in Mandarin Chinese as well as the acquisition of yào by L2 adult learners whose L1 was English, using data from the Academia Sinica corpus and a learner corpus. The modal meanings of yào were categorized into three types--epistemic, participant-internal, and participant-external. Major findings were: (a) the participant-internal yào was the most frequently used in the L2 data, followed by the participant-external yào and then the epistemic yào, which is consistent with the process of L1 acquisition and grammaticalization; (b) the rate of use of participant-internal yào decreased with the learners’ proficiency level while that of participant-external yào increased with proficiency level. Four types of errors, omission, addition, mis-selection and misordering, were analyzed. The analysis reveals that both the learners’ L1 and their having inadequate knowledge of Mandarin had important effect on their learning Mandarin as a second or foreign language. Keywords: modal verb YAO, L2 acquisition, learner corpus, Mandarin, English

*

This study was funded by the “Aim for the Top University Project,” sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C. An earlier version of this paper was presented at The 13th BCLTS International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese in Higher Education. We are grateful for the comments given by the audience. Our gratitude also goes to the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Of course, any remaining errors are ours. 99

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12

1. Introduction Modal verb yào 1 in Mandarin Chinese has different meanings in different contexts and may correspond to want (to), need (to), must, will and be going to in English. This may cause difficulties for native speakers of English in learning Mandarin Chinese as a second or foreign language. Yào’s similarities to and differences from xiǎng(yào) and other modal verbs in Mandarin make the L2 learning more challenging. Hence, the aim of the present study was to examine the acquisition of the modal verb yào in Mandarin Chinese by adult second language learners whose L1 was English by using the data from a learner corpus consisting of online written tests of different genres conducted in the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University. Comparisons between L2 learners’ and L1 speakers’ usages of yào were also made and errors produced by the L2 learners were analyzed as well in hopes of shedding light on teaching and learning Mandarin as a second or foreign language. This paper is organized as follows. The literature related to modality and the modal meanings of yào is reviewed in Section 2 together with the discussion of the English counterparts of yào and the categorization of the various yào meanings employed in our analysis. The information of the L1 and L2 data is given in Section 3. Section 4 presents the results of the analysis, followed by the analysis of the cases where yào was not correctly used (i.e., non-target-like cases) in Section 5. Some pedagogical implications and limitations of the present study are given in Section 6.

2. Modal meanings of yào and their English counterparts In this section, various modal meanings and categories are reviewed in Section 2.1 and the categorization of modality employed in this study is also discussed. The modal meanings of yào are examined in Section 2.2. The categorization of yào’s meanings is presented in Section 2.3 and the English counterparts of yào are given in Section 2.4.

1

Abbreviations used in this paper, mostly in the English gloss of examples: yao = yào; hui = huì (a modal verb); gen = genitive; part = particle; neg = negation; guo = perfective aspect marker; le = perfective/ inchoative particle; cl = classifier; de = genitive/ complementizer/ manner adverb marker; cai = an adverbial conjunction, roughly equals to ‘until’. 100

LI, HSIEH: L2 Acquisition of the Mandarin Modal Verb YAO by L1 English Speakers

2.1 Modal meanings and our categorization Modal meanings can be expressed via main verbs, adverbs, auxiliaries, etc., and have been categorized into different types and named in various ways (e.g., Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994; Li 2004; Depraetere 2010; Reed and Depraetere 2011). The three domains of modal meanings that are generally recognized are epistemic, deontic and dynamic modalities. Epistemic modality, the most widely acknowledged category of modality, indicates the speaker’s judgment or commitment to the truth of the propositional content of his utterance (Halliday 1970; Lyons 1977; Coates and Leech 1980; Coates 1983, 1995; Palmer 1986, 1990, 2001, 2003; Brewer 1987; Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994; Nuyts, Byloo and Diepeveen 2005). For example, may in (1a) and must in (1b) denote epistemic modality when the speaker of (1a) suggests that it is possible for the subject to go to London every day, and when (1b) expresses the speaker’s judgment that it is certain that the subject is there. For the examples taken from previous studies, the reference is given at the end of the example. (1) a. He may go to London every day. (Palmer 1990:52) b. He must be there. (Palmer 1986:58) Deontic modality relates “the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents” (Lyons 1977:823), involving meanings such as obligation and permission (Lyons 1977; Coates and Leech 1980; Coates 1983, 1995; Leech 2004; Palmer 1986, 1990, 2001, 2003), as exemplified in (2). (2a) involves permission because the subject is given permission to leave. (2b) is an example of obligation. It indicates that the obligation to come tomorrow is imposed upon John by someone else. (2) a. He can leave now. (Palmer 2001:10) b. John must come tomorrow. (Palmer 1986:98) Dynamic modality is added by Palmer (1979) based on von Wright (1951). Whether dynamic modality has a modal meaning is controversial. For example, Papafragou (1998:2) questions the grounds on which Palmer introduced dynamic modality into the field. Gisborne (2007) argues that the dynamic senses of English can and will should not be treated as subtypes of modality. However, dynamic modality has also been recognized by scholars such as Coates (1983, 1995), Coates and Leech (1980), Leech (2004), Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994), Huddleston and 101

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 Pullum (2002), van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), and van der Auwera (2001) under different names or with slightly different definitions. Hence, we consider dynamic modality a domain of modality as well. Palmer’s dynamic modality includes two subclasses: ‘subject-oriented’ ability and volition, and possibility and necessity attributed to ‘neutral’ or ‘circumstantial’ conditions (Palmer 1986:102-103, 1990:36). (3) is ambiguous between the two interpretations. It is an example of neutral or circumstantial modality when it expresses the possibility for the participant to escape under an external condition, e.g., the door is not locked; on the other hand, it may indicate the participant has the ability to escape, which denotes subject-oriented ability. (3) He can escape. (Palmer 2001:10) It can be seen above that Palmer’s dynamic modality covers a wide range of meanings. Huddleston and Pullum (2002:178) define dynamic modality as being “concerned with properties and dispositions of persons,” which corresponds to Palmer’s subject-oriented modality. Hofmann (1993:98) also considers ability/ capacity modality subject-oriented. Hence, it is reasonable to view Palmer’s ‘subjectoriented’ modality as an independent category. However, the term ‘subject-oriented’ may not be restrictive enough since deontic modality can also be regarded as subjectoriented in that it concerns permission given to the subject or obligation imposed on the subject. ‘Participant-internal modality’ proposed by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) and van der Auwera (2001) appears to be a more restrictive and comprehensible category than ‘subject-oriented’. Instead of dividing modality into three domains, van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) and van der Auwera (2001) divide modality into four domains: participantinternal, participant-external, deontic and epistemic. Their epistemic modality, like that of other scholars’, also refers to the speaker’s judgment of a proposition. Their participant-internal modality, similar to Palmer’s subject-oriented modality, covers “possibility or necessity internal to a participant engaged in the state of affairs” (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998:80), involving the participant’s ability and internal need. (4a) and (4b) are examples of participant-internal modality. In (4a), it is the participant’s ability that is of concern, whereas (4b) is about the participant’s internal need.

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(4) a. Boris can get by with sleeping five hours a night. (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998:80) b. Boris needs to sleep ten hours every night for him to function properly. (Ibid) On the other hand, van der Auwera and Plungian’s participant-external modality “refers to circumstances that are external to the participant, if any, engaged in the state of affairs and that make this state of affairs either possible or necessary” (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998:80). (5a) is an example of their participant-external possibility and (5b) an example of participant-external necessity. Both are similar to Palmer’s neutral or circumstantial modality. (5) a. To get to the station, you can take bus 66. (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998:80) b. To get to the station, you have to take bus 66. (Ibid) Deontic modality, according to van der Auwera and Plungian, is a subdomain or special case of participant-external modality and “identifies the enabling or compelling circumstances external to the participant… permitting or obliging the participant to engage in the state of affairs” (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998:81). To them, permission is a deontic possibility and obligation, deontic necessity, similar to Lyons’ (1977) deontic modality introduced above. The literature reviewed above can be summarized as follows. First, epistemic modality, referring to the speaker’s judgment or commitment to the truth of the propositional content, is the most widely recognized category of modality. Second, Palmer’s subject-oriented modality is similar to Huddleston and Pullum’s dynamic modality and Hofmann’s capacity/ability modality, and close to van der Auwera and Plungian and van der Auwera’s participant-internal modality in that the participant’s ability, volition or internal need is involved, but ‘participant-internal modality’ is a more appropriate term since it is more restrictive and comprehensible. Third, Palmer’s neutral or circumstantial modality is like van der Auwera and Plungian and van der Auwera’s participant-external modality in that both concern circumstantial possibility or necessity. Fourth, deontic modality, involving the permission given to the subject and obligation imposed on the subject, is a category recognized by most scholars but is considered a subdomain of participant-external modality in van der Auwera and

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臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 Plungian and van der Auwera because the deontic source comes from participantexternal circumstances. In this study, modality is categorized into three domains based on van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) and van der Auwera (2001) with some modification, namely, epistemic, participant-internal and participant-external. Our epistemic modality, like that in most studies, refers to the speaker’s judgment or commitment to the truth of the propositional content of his utterance. Our participant-internal modality, similar to Palmer’s subject-oriented modality and van der Auwera and Plungian’s participant-internal modality, includes the participant’s ability, volition/will and internal need/desire. We use the term ‘participant-internal’ instead of ‘dynamic’ or ‘subject-oriented’ because ‘participant-internal’ is more restrictive and graspable, as discussed above. Our participant-external modality refers the possibility or necessity caused by individuals other than or circumstances external to the participant, including permission and obligation. Deontic modality is subsumed under our participant-external modality instead of being treated as an independent category because the deontic source comes from participant-external elements, such as the speaker, certain authorities or social codes. Yào’s modal meanings are discussed in Section 2.2 and categorized into these three modality classes in Section 2.3.

2.2 Modal meanings of yào Yào in Mandarin may function as a verb, a modal auxiliary or a conjunction. Since the focus of this study is on L2 acquisition of yào’s modal meanings, the discussion in this section only includes yào occurring as a modal auxiliary. Li and Thompson (1981) do not consider yào as an auxiliary verb. However, it is viewed and argued to be an auxiliary by other researchers, such as Tsang (1981), Lü (1999), Hwang (1999), Liu, Pan and Gu (2001), Hsieh (2002), Li (2004), Wu and Kuo (2010), among others. As a modal auxiliary, yào can be used to express the participant’s internal need, desire, will or volition (e.g., Lü 1999:592; Zhu 1982:76; Hwang 1999:83; Liu, Pan and Gu 2001:175; Li 2004:160), as in (6a). According to Lü (1999), yào of this meaning can be preceded by xiǎng ‘think’ to form xiǎngyào ‘want’, i.e., yào here can be replaced by xiǎngyào, as in (6b). (6) a. Tā yào xué he

yao learn

yóuyǒng.

(Lü 1999:592)

swim

‘He wants/would like to learn how to swim.’ 104


b. Wǒ (xiǎng-)yào I

think-yao

huí-jiā. go.back-home.

‘I want/would like to go home.’ Slightly different from the meaning of yào in (6a) and (6b), modal yào can also be used to express the participant’s plan or decision to do something, as in (7a) and (7b). In (7a), the word jìhuà/ dǎsuàn ‘plan’ explicitly indicates that the participant has a plan to go traveling. (7b) indicates that Lisi is going to or plans to give his friend a lot of photos. Yào can also mark futurity with the participant’s intention involved, a use called “volitional future” in Wu and Kuo (2010:60), as shown in (7c). (7) a. Wǒmen jìhuà/dǎsuàn yào yìqǐ we

plan

qù

yao together go

lǚxíng. travel

‘We plan to go traveling together.’ b. Lǐsì Lisi

yào gěi tā-péngyǒu hěnduō

zhàopiàn.

yao give he-friend

photo

many

‘Lisi is going to give his friend many photos.’ c. Míngtiān tomorrow

māma yào lái

Táiběi kàn wǒ.

mother yao come Taipei see I

‘My mom is coming to Taipei to see me tomorrow.’ Yào also denotes obligation (e.g., Lü 1999:592; Zhu 1982:76; Hsieh 2002:135; Hwang 1999:84; Liu, Pan and Gu 2001:176; Li 2004:169), as shown in (8a)-(8b). (8a) indicates that if the hearer borrows things from someone else, s/he has the obligation to return the things to the lender. The speaker of (8b) uses the imperative sentence to tell the hearer that s/he has the obligation to not waste water. The source of authority in these sentences is the speaker. Li (2004:169), based on Gao (1948/1986:274), argues that yào can express yīngrán ‘ought to be so’. (9) is such an example, where the authority comes from the law or some social code. (8) a. Jiè borrow

dōngxī

yào huán.

thing

yao return

(Lü 1999:592)

‘If you borrow things from others, you must return them.’ b. Bú-yào

làngfèi

neg-yao waste

shuǐ.

(Ibid)

water

‘Don’t waste water.’

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臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 (9) Shā-rén

zhě

sǐxíng.

yào pàn

kill-person person

(Tsang 1981:89)

yao sentence death.penalty

‘Killers must be sentenced to death.’ Different from the examples in (8) and (9), where the obligation to do something or to be treated in a certain way is imposed on the participant by some authorities or social codes, yào in (10a) and (10b) conveys the necessity according to reasons or factual needs external to the participant (Zhu 1982:76; Liu, Pan and Gu 2001:176; Li 2004:170). (10) a. Guò

hé

cross river

yào yǒu

chuán.

yao have

boat

(Zhu 1982:76)

‘(We) must have a boat to get across the river.’ b. Nǐ

yào duō

hē

niúnǎi cái huì zhǎng gāo.

you yao more drink milk

then will grow tall

‘You need to drink more milk in order to grow taller.’ Moreover, yào can be used to express epistemic probability (Li 2004:149; Lü 1999:592; Liu, Pan and Gu 2001:176) as in (11) and (12), though this usage of yào is not as frequent as other uses (Ren 2008:132). Yào in these two sentences conveys the speaker’s judgment of the proposition. (11) may be the conclusion reached by the speaker after seeing the large number of issues on the agenda of the meeting. Similarly, the speaker utters (12) probably after seeing the shabby cottage being shaken by the wind and feels that it may collapse at any moment. (11) Huìyì

dàgài

yào dào

yuè-dǐ

meeting probably yao arrive month-bottom

cái néng

jiéshù.

cai can

end

‘The meeting probably won’t be ended until the end of the month.’ (Lü 1999:592) (12) Wū-dǐng house-top

yào tā-xiàlái le,

kuài

pǎo.

yao fall-down le

quickly run

‘The roof is going to fall down. Run away quickly.’ Hwang (1999) argues that yào does not have epistemic meaning and what yào conveys in examples like (11) and (12) is personal deontic meaning (i.e., promise). However, we would like to follow the studies cited above and suggest that yào in

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these examples expresses epistemic probability because it conveys the speaker’s judgment of the proposition. Yào in (11) and (12) also denotes futurity but unlike (7c), no volition is involved. This futurity meaning of yào is assumed to be a progressive aspect in Lin (2012), which is, however, not correct since futurity is not equivalent to progressive. Besides, according to Li (2004:149) and Wu and Kuo (2010:63), when le is used at the end of the sentence, there is an explicit epistemic reading. Yào is also used to denote estimation in comparative sentences (Lü 1999:593; Liu, Pan and Gu 2001:177; Li 2004:148), as shown in (13). Alleton (1994:12-13) suggests that this is an epistemic usage. (13) Tā yào bǐ he

wǒ zǒu-de

yao compare I

kuài

walk-de fast

xiē. (Lü 1999:593) a.little

‘He walks a little faster than me.’ According to Lü (1999:592), we can only use bú-huì ‘neg-hui’ to negate a sentence with epistemic yào instead of adding the negative morpheme bú before yào since bú-yào ‘neg-yao’ means ‘not willing to’. This applies to estimation yào also, as shown in (14) and (15). If (12) and (13) are negated with bú-huì, they still have the epistemic reading, as shown in (14a) and (15a). If they are negated with bú-yào, the meanings are different. (14b) is like an imperative sentence and yào has the deontic reading while yào in (15b) denotes volition. These examples indicate that yào in (12) and (13) indeed conveys an epistemic meaning. (14) a. Wū-dǐng house-top

bú-huì

tā-xiàlái

neg-hui fall-down

le. le

‘The roof will not fall down.’ b. Wū-dǐng house-top

bú-yào

tā-xiàlái

neg-yao fall-down

le. le

‘Do not let the roof fall down.’ (15) a. Tā bú-huì he

bǐ

wǒ zǒu-de

neg-hui compare I

kuài.

walk-de fast

‘He won’t walk faster than me.’ b. Tā bú-yào he

bǐ

wǒ zǒu-de

neg-yao compare I

kuài.

walk-de fast

‘He doesn’t want to walk faster than me.’

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2.3 Categorization of yào’s modal meanings The discussion above has shown that the modal yào can convey several different meanings: (i) the participant’s desire, will or volition, (ii) the participant’s plan/decision to do something or volitional future, (iii) the obligation imposed by authorities, the law or social codes, (iv) the necessity according to reasons or factual needs, (v) epistemic probability, and (vi) the speaker’s estimation. These six meanings can be neatly classified into our three modality domains discussed at the end of Section 2.1: (a) epistemic modality: referring to the speaker’s judgment or commitment to the truth of the propositional content of his utterance; (b) participantinternal modality: including the participant’s ability, volition/will and internal need/desire; and (c) participant-external modality: referring to the possibility or necessity caused by individuals other than or circumstances external to the participant, including permission and obligation. The classification of the six modal meanings of yào into these three categories is described as follows and summarized in Table 1. (6ab) and (7a-c), i.e., meanings (i) and (ii), are examples of participant-internal modality because yào in these sentences expresses the participant’s internal need/desire and volition/will. (8a-b) and (9), i.e., meaning (iii), are examples of participant-external modality because yào in these sentences denotes the obligation imposed on the participant by the speaker or the law. (10a-b), i.e., meaning (iv), are also cases of participant-external modality since yào in these sentences conveys factual needsthe necessity caused by participant-external circumstances. (11) and (12), i.e., meaning (v), are examples of epistemic modality because yào in these sentences expresses epistemic futurity or probability. Sentence (13), i.e., meaning (vi), is also an example of epistemic modality because yào here denotes the speaker’s estimation, which is an epistemic usage since the speaker’s judgment is involved (Alleton 1994:12-13). Table 1 Our categorization of meanings of modal yào Categories of

Meanings of

modality

yào

Examples participant’s Participant-

desire, internal

internal

need, volition or will

(6) a. Tā yào xué yóuyǒng. ‘He wants/would like to learn how to swim.’ b. Wǒ (xiǎng) yào huí-jiā. ‘I want/would like to go home.’

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LI, HSIEH: L2 Acquisition of the Mandarin Modal Verb YAO by L1 English Speakers Categories of

Meanings of

modality

yào

Examples (7) a. Wǒmen jìhuà/dǎsuàn yào yìqǐ qù lǚxíng. participant’s decision/plan, volitional future

‘We plan to go traveling together.’ b. Lǐsì yào gěi tā-péngyǒu hěnduō zhàopiàn. ‘Lisi is going to give his friend many photos.’ c. Míngtiān māma yào lái Táiběi kàn wǒ. ‘My mom is coming to Taipei to see me tomorrow.’ (8) a. Jiè dōngxī yào huán. ‘If you borrow things, you must return them.’ b. Bú-yào làngfèi shuǐ.

obligation

‘Don’t waste water.’ (9) Shā-rén zhě yào pàn sǐxíng.

Participant-

‘Killers must be sentenced to death.’

external

(10) a. Guò hé yào yǒu chuán. ‘(We) must have a boat to get across the river. factual need

b. Nǐ yào duō hē niúnǎi cái huì zhǎng gāo. ‘You need to drink more milk in order to grow taller.’ (11) Huìyìdàgài yào dào yuè-dǐ cái néng jiéshù.

Epistemic

epistemic

‘The meeting probably won’t be ended until the end of the

futurity/

month.’

probability

(12) Wūdǐng yào tā-xiàlái le, kuài pǎo. ‘The roof is going to fall down. Run away quickly.’ (13) Tā yào bǐ wǒ zǒu-de kuài xiē.

estimation

‘He walks a little faster than me.’

2.4 Yào’s counterparts in English and its L2 learning difficulty Modal yào may have different English counterparts in different contexts. According to Zhou, Zhu and Deng (2007:96-97), yào is interpreted as would and will in English when it denotes participant-internal modality such as intention and volition; when yào denotes participant-external modality, it corresponds to shall, should, must and have to in English; if yào conveys epistemic meanings, it resembles be going to in English. Although Zhou, Zhu and Deng (2007) list various possible English interpretations of modal yào, not all possibilities are included. As seen in examples (6) and (7) in 2.2, when yào denotes participant-internal modality, it may also correspond to want, would like to, plan to and be going to in English, besides would and will. 109

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 When yào denotes participant-external modality, besides shall, should, must and have to, it may also correspond to need in English, as shown in (10b). The epistemic yào’s counterpart in English may be be going to, but it seems difficult to find an English word or phrase that may correspond to estimation yào in (13). It is obvious that modal yào may be translated into different modal verbs in English in different contexts and those English modal verbs also have meanings other than those correspondent with yào’s meanings, which may thus cause difficulties for native speakers of English in learning Mandarin as a second or foreign language. The contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) suggests that learners’ L1 may have effects on their L2 learningcross-linguistic differences may result in obstacles to L2 learning while similarities may lead to learning facilitation (e.g., Fries 1945; Lado 1957; Faerch and Kasper 1987). CAH supporters also claim that the difficulty that L2 learners may encounter can be predicted by studying the differences between L1 and L2. A CAH-based hierarchy of difficulty was first proposed by Stockwell, Bowen and Martin (1965) and then elaborated by Prator (1967, cited from Brown 2007:220221). Prator categorizes the learning difficulty that the L2 learner may face into six levels, Level 0 to Level 5, with Level 0 the lowest and Level 5 the highest: Level 0— Transfer, no difference or contrast is present between the two languages; Level 1— Coalescence, two items in the native language become coalesced into essentially one item in the target language; Level 2—Under differentiation, an item in the native language is absent in the target language; Level 3—Reinterpretation, an item that exists in the native language is given a new shape or distribution; Level 4—Over differentiation, a new item entirely, bearing little if any similarity to the native language item, must be learned; Level 5—Split, one item in the native language becomes two or more in the target language, requiring the learner to make a new distinction. As the discussion above suggests that yào may be translated into different modal verbs in English in different contexts and those English modal verbs also have meanings other than those correspondent with yào’s meanings, the level of difficulty faced by L1 English speakers in learning the modal verb yào seems to be the highest — Level 5, namely “Split — one item in the native language becomes two or more in the target language requiring the learner to make a new distinction.” That is, L2 learners whose L1 is English may encounter some difficulties in learning modal

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yào in Mandarin.

3. The data The corpus used in this study was a learner corpus built by the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University. The texts came from the computer-based writing Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL). The corpus contained more than one million Chinese words (Chang 2014). The tests of TOCFL were given at four levels based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) —with A2 the lowest, C1 the highest, and B1 and B2 being the levels in between. But in the corpus, the amount of data collected in each proficiency level was not evenly distributedabout 48% of the data came from B1 learners, 33% from B2 learners, 13% from A2 learners and 6% from C1 learners (Chang 2014:55). Within each level, the tests were graded on a scale of 5. The L2 learners may choose to take part in the exam of a specific level, but only tests scored 3 or above were considered to fall within a given proficiency level. In this study, only data from tests scored 3 or above were analyzed. In the learner corpus, various genres were included, according to Chang (2013) and the information given in the corpus. Data from A2-level students were mostly picture description and memo writing. B1-level learners’ questions were mainly composed of letter writing (for description, suggestion, requests, and providing information), note writing (for explanation or rejection), and narratives. B2-level students had to write argumentations and narratives in addition to descriptions, suggestions, requests, and information provision; learners of the C1 level were asked to write reports and argumentations. In the L2 corpus, the modal verb yào was annotated an adverb for some unknown reason. In total, 445 instances of yào annotated adverb from the tests graded 3 or above and produced by L1 speakers of English were retrieved from the corpus. After eliminating the instances that were not real modals, i.e., those not followed by a verb or verb phrase, and that were not interpretable, the remaining 421 instances of yào were analyzed in the present study. Among them, 34 were non-target-like and 387 were correctly used. The 387 instances were analyzed according to the three modality categories derived from the discussion in Section 2.3, and the 34 error cases were also analyzed into different types, presented in Section 5. At the same time, L1 data were retrieved from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (http://asbc.iis.sinica.edu.tw/), which consists of more 111

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 than 11 million word tokens from 19,247 articles of different genres. The Sinica corpus includes different kinds of texts: written, written-to-be-spoken (e.g., play scripts), written-to-be-read (e.g., speech scripts), spoken-to-be-written (e.g., meeting minutes), and spoken. Over 90% of the data was from written articles and only about 2% was from real spoken data. In this study, we only retrieved data from written texts in order to match the L2 data type. By using yào as the keyword, selecting the category D (the category of modal verbs in the corpus) as the targeted category, and choosing written articles as the texts to be searched, we retrieved around 14000 tokens of yào from the L1 data. From these 14,000 tokens, we took the first 400 for the present study, which was roughly equivalent to the number of the L2 tokens of yào. After the cases of yào mis-categorized as modal verbs were eliminated, 386 instances were left. These 386 instances were analyzed based on the categories of yào presented in Section 2.3 and then compared with the L2 data. The L1 and L2 data were first analyzed by three assistants. If they had disagreements, they discussed the problem with each other and then double-checked with the researchers. After all the data was analyzed, the researchers and an assistant with an M.A. degree re-examined the data and discussed the problematic cases until an agreement was reached.

4. Results and discussion The results of analyzing the 386 instances of yào produced by L1 speakers and the 387 tokens correctly used by the L2 learners are presented in Table 2 and Table 3, respectively. Table 2 L1 speakers’ usage of yào Participant-internal desire,

Participant-external

plan/decision,

Epistemic epistemic

total

factual internal need,

volitional

volition

future

obligation

futurity/

estimation

need 140 (36.3%) 86 (22.3%)

54 (14.0%)

probability 207 (53.6%) 184 (47.7%)

23 (5.9%)

112

39 (10.1%) 34 (8.8%)

5 (1.3%)

386 (100%)


Table 3 L2 learners’ correct usage of yào Participant internal desire,

Participant external

plan/decision

Epistemic epistemic

total

factual internal need,

volitional

obligation

futurity/

estimation

need volition

future

probability

61 (77.2%)

15 (19.0%)

3 (3.8%) 79

A2

26

35

11

4

3

0

(32.9%)

(44.3%)

(13.9%)

(5.1%)

(3.8%)

(0%)

176 (65.7%)

82 (30.6%)

(100%)

10 (3.7%) 268

B1

66

110

66

16

10

0

(24.6%)

(41.1%)

(24.6%)

(6.0%)

(3.7%)

(0%)

8 (28.6%)

19 (67.8%)

(100%)

1 (3.6%) 28

B2

6

2

12

7

0

1

(21.4%)

(7.2%)

(42.8%)

(25.0%)

(0%)

(3.6%)

2 (16.7%)

9 (75.0%)

(100%)

1 (8.3%) 12

C1

0

2

9

0

1

0

(0%)

(16.7%)

(75.0%)

(0%)

(8.3%)

(0%)

247 (63.8%)

125 (32.3%)

15 (3.9%)

(100%) 387

total 98 (25.3%)

149 (38.5%)

98 (25.3%)

27 (7.0%)

14 (3.6%)

1 (0.3%)

(100%)

Table 2 and 3 reveal some interesting facts. First, participant-internal yào was the most frequently used by the L2 learners (63.8%), followed by participant-external yào (32.3%), with epistemic yào being the least frequently used (3.9%). In the L1 data, however, participant-external yào was the most frequently found (53.6%), followed by participant-internal yào (36.3%), and as with the L2 learners, the epistemic yào was the least frequently used (10.1%). Second, generally speaking, the rate of use of participant-internal yào decreased with the proficiency level of the L2 learners while the rate of use of participant-external yào increased with their proficiency level. But epistemic yào was not so frequently used by the L2 learners nor by native speakers. The results suggest that B2- and C1-level learners’ usage of yào was closer to L1 speakers’. A chi-square analysis did show significant difference between L1 speakers’ and A2-/B1-level learners’ usage of yào (L1 vs. A2: χ2 = 57.197136 (p < .01), L1 vs. B1: χ2 = 100.911226 (p < .01)), but no significant difference was found between L1 speakers’ and B2-/C1-level learners’ usage of yào (L1 vs. B2: χ2 =2.704178 (p >.05), 113

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 L1 vs. C1: χ2 = 2.336640 (p >.05)). Due to the number in some of the cells in Table 3 being less than 5, the results of chi-square analysis may not be reliable. However, the fact that B2- and C1-level learners’ usage of yào was closer to L1 speakers’ is statistically supported. The third fact is that, though both L1’s and L2’s rates of use of epistemic yào were comparatively low, the L2’s rate seemed to be much lower than the L1’s: 3.9% vs. 10.1%. This indicates that the L2 learners were not so familiar with the epistemic usage of yào. These findings seem to be related to the subjectivity of modality. Subjectivity is a terminology introduced by Lyons (1977:792). It refers “to the way in which natural languages, in their structure and their normal manner of operation, provide for the locutionary agent’s expression of himself and of his own attitudes and beliefs” (Lyons 1982:102). According to Palmer (1990:7), epistemic modality is usually, perhaps always, subjective because it is related to the speaker’s inference and not simply concerned with something that can be objectively verified. Deontic modality “is usually subjective in that the speaker is the one who obliges, permits or forbids” (Palmer 1990:7); on the other hand, Verstraete (2001) argues that there is an objective category of deontic modality since no speaker’s commitment to the proposition is involved, e.g., (16). We, however, suggest that examples like (16) do not really denote objective deontic modality because the speaker’s knowledge of the situation or circumstance is involved. (16) Brake shoes must always be renewed in sets of four. (Verstraete 2001:1526) In contrast, dynamic modality, Palmer’s subject-oriented modality in particular, is objective since it is about the grammatical subject’s ability and volition, and dynamic modals “merely make purely objective statements about the subject of the sentence” (Palmer 1990:36). Our participant-internal yào, similar to Palmer’s subject-oriented modals, conveys objective modality in that it involves the participant’s desire, need and volition. Our participant-external yào expresses subjective modality for if yào denotes obligation, the obligation is imposed by the speaker or some authorities, and if yào conveys factual need, the speaker’s knowledge of the situation or circumstance is involved. Our epistemic modality of yào is subjective, like other epistemic modals, in that it includes the speaker’s attitude and judgment.

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According to the results given in Table 2 and Table 3, the difference between the L1 and L2 data reveals that the L2 learners acquired the more objective participantinternal modality first, which was followed by the more subjective participantexternal and epistemic modalities. The developmental sequence exhibited in the different proficiency levels also suggests that participant-internal modality was acquired before participant-external and epistemic modality. This finding is consistent with the results from studies of second language acquisition (e.g., Moloi 1998) and first language acquisition (e.g., Stephany 1986; Guo 1994) in that more objective modalities are acquired before less objective modalities. Diessel (2011:130) notes that “grammaticalization and first language acquisition frequently involve the same semantic changes. In both developments, abstract grammatical meanings are commonly derived from more concrete meanings.” Studies of the grammaticalization of modal verbs (e.g., Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994) have found that deontic modal verbs developed from lexical verbs and epistemic modal verbs developed from deontic modal verbs. This suggests that the more objective a modal is, the more concrete is its meaning and the easier it can be acquired. This implies that in a language classroom, participant-internal yào should be introduced before participant-external yào, which in turn should be introduced before epistemic yào.

5. Analysis of the non-target-like cases The 34 cases of non-target-like usage of yào only constitute about 8% of the total tokens of yào, but the 8% merely reveals the rate at which yào was not correctly used. Studies (e.g., Schachter 1974; James 1998) have shown that learners may employ the strategy of avoidance or replace the target word with other words. For example, the learner may use huì in place of yào (Yeh 2009), as shown in (17), cited from Li and Hsieh (2014). (17) * Tamen they

yikuai

jueding

together decide

shenme dianying tamen hui kan what

movie

they

hui see

‘They together decided what movie they would like to see.’ To have a better understanding of the L2 learners’ knowledge of yào and to find out the learners’ learning difficulties, the 34 cases of non-target-like usage are analyzed in terms of the proficiency levels in Section 5.1. In Section 5.2, the 34 errors 115

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 are further divided into different types and examined in detail. In addition, extra data were retrieved from the learner corpus to look for cases where yào was avoided or replaced. Section 5.3 summarizes and discusses the findings.

5.1 The distribution of the errors across the three proficiency levels The distribution of the 34 non-targeted cases of yào across the three proficiency levels is given in Table 4. Table 4 suggests that more than half of the errors made were contributed by learners at the B1 level; however, this is because the number of yào instances produced by the learners at each level was different. If the error rate of each proficiency level is considered, that of the A2 level was the highest, as shown in (18). This result should be expected since A2-level learners were beginners. Table 4 Distribution of the error usage of yào Levels

A2

B1

B2

C1

11

20

2

1

(32.4%)

(58.8%)

(5.9%)

(2.9%)

Error rate Total

34 (100%)

(18) Error rate of each proficiency level A2: 11/90 = 12.2% B1: 20/288 = 6.9% B2: 2/30 = 6.7% C1: 1/13 = 7.7%

5.2 Error types According to James (1998) and Chen (2011), errors made by L2 learners can be categorized into five types: omission, addition, mis-selection, misordering and blends. Except for blends, errors produced in combining two grammatical sentences into an ill-formed sentence, which were not found in our L2 data, the other four types of errors are discussed in Sections 5.2.1-5.2.4 respectively. Note that when it was difficult to classify an error case because two or more error types were involved, we categorized it into the type that could most clearly explain why it was not appropriate or acceptable in the context (e.g., example (31) below).

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5.2.1 Omission In the corpus, the L2 learners’ errors are not marked. Errors caused by the learners’ avoiding yào or not knowing how to use yào cannot be detected in the data of yào. To find out where the L2 learners were more likely to replace yào with other words or to avoid using yào, we used wǒ ‘I’ as the key word to retrieve more data produced by L1 English speakers from the learner corpus. We then segmented the data into complete sentences. In this way, 2,538 complete sentences were segmented and examined. Among these sentences, no ungrammatical sentences resulted from yào being replaced by other words were found but there were 8 cases where yào was omitted. Yào was found to be omitted in two places. In five out of the eight instances, yào was omitted where it should have been used as a volitional future marker, e.g., (19). (For the data taken from the learner corpus, the learner’s proficiency level is given. B1 in (19) indicates that this example was produced by a learner at the B1 level.) Without yào, (19) is only marginally acceptable and to some native speakers, completely unacceptable. A possible reason is that the L2 learners mistakenly considered yào to convey pure future but not volition, and since Mandarin is a language in which tense is not explicitly marked (Lin 2006), the L2 learners hence failed to use yào when volitional future was called for. In the other three cases, yào was omitted where it should have appeared with another modal element. For example, (20) is ungrammatical because yào was omitted while there is another modal verb, yīnggāi, in the sentence. This may be explained by L1 interference since in most dialects of English, double modals are not allowed, which is not true in Mandarin. (19) Wǒ děngbùjí I

(yào) gēn nǐ

?

wait.not.reach

jiànmiàn. (B1)

yao with you meet

‘I can’t wait to meet you.’ (20) Tāmen yīnggāi bú they

should

neg

*(yào) yao

zài

dānxīn wǒmende qíngxíng. (B1)

again worry our

situation

‘They shouldn’t worry about our situation again.’

5.2.2 Addition Errors produced by L2 learners may result from adding linguistic elements that are not allowed, such as inappropriately adding the perfective aspect marker le (Chen 2011:26). Nine instances of addition error were found in the L2 data and can be 117

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 categorized into two subtypes. The first subtype includes cases where linguistic elements that cannot co-occur with yào, such as the perfective aspect marker guò or le and the sentential-final particle ba, were added. When yào is used to express volitional future, it cannot cooccur with the perfective aspect makers le and guò. Four instances of this error were found in the L2 data. In (21), the L2 learner added guò to volitional future modal yào (future in the past here), but as a modal verb, yào cannot co-occur with aspectual marker guò. To make (21) grammatical, guò should be removed. Likewise, yào in (22) also indicates volitional future (future in the past here) and le should not be used. Note that Li (2004:149) suggests that if le is used at the end of the yào sentence, there would be an explicit epistemic reading. Li’s le is the inchoative le, not the perfective le discussed here. Also, an epistemic interpretation of yào is not appropriate here. The phrase bú-jiàn ‘neg-see’ makes (22) somewhat awkward. But even if we replace it with xiāoshī ‘disappear’, the sentence is still ungrammatical because of le. Besides, participant-internal yào is used to express the participant’s desire or volition and is semantically incompatible with the sentence-final concession particle ba. One instance of this error was found, as shown in (23). (21) *Wǒ I

yào-guò gēn tā

tán-tán.

yao-guo with he

talk-talk

(A2)

‘I wanted to talk with him.’ (22) *Nàlǐ-de bái-rén

fēicháng xǐhuān yì-zhǒng

there-gen white-person very yīnwèi

tāmen xǐhuān

because they

like

bù-xǐhuān. Hēi-rén neg-like

like

one-cl

yùndòng,

kěshì

exercise

but

nà-ge yùndòng,

suǒyǐ hēi-rén

that-cl exercise

so

yào nà-ge yùndòng

black-person yao that-cl exercise

black-person bú-jiàn

le.

neg-see le

‘The white people there liked a kind of exercise very much. But because they liked the exercise, the black people did not like it. *They wanted the exercise to have disappeared.’ (23) *Wǒ bù-néng zài I

xiě

(A2)

le, wǒ yào qù

neg-can again write le

I yao go

gěi tā

dǎ-ge-diànhuà ba.

give he

make.a.call

‘I can’t write anymore. I’m going to give him a phone call.’

118

(B1)

part


The second subtype of addition error includes cases where yào was misused as a pure future marker and should be deleted. Yào can be used to express volitional future and epistemic future. Hence, the L2 learners sometimes mistook it for a pure future marker and used it where it should not appear. There were four instances of such error found in the L2 data. (24) is an example where yào was overused and should be deleted. In this example, the speaker was telling his/her friend when and where they were going to meet with each other. According to the learner’s intended meaning, wǒmen in this sentence is an ‘inclusive we’, i.e., both the speaker and the hearer are included. Yào was used here as a pure future marker and should be deleted; otherwise, the sentence has a different interpretation, namely ‘We want to meet at 10 this Friday morning at Exit 6 of the Guting MRT station,’ and wǒmen is an ‘exclusive we’, i.e., it only includes the speaker and his/her own friend(s) but not the hearer. Note that (24) is not an example of misordering, an error type discussed in Section 5.2.4, because if we move yào to the place after shí-diǎnzhōng ‘ten o’clock’and before zài, as in (24’), the meaning of the sentence is still different from the intended meaning. Wǒmen in (24’) is an ‘exclusive we’, which is not the meaning targeted by the learner. (24) Wǒmen *yào zhè-ge xīngqíwǔ zǎoshàng shí-diǎnzhōng zài Gǔtíng We

yao

this-cl Friday

morning ten-o’clock

jié-yùn

de

liù-hào

chūkǒu

jiànmiàn. (B1)

rapid-transit

de

six-number

exit

meet

at

Guting

Literally: ‘We (the hearer excluded) want to meet at 10 this Friday morning at Exit 6 of the Guting MRT station.’ Intended: ‘We (the hearer included) are going to meet at 10 this Friday morning at Exit 6 of the Guting MRT station.’ (24’) Wǒmen zhè-ge xīngqíwǔ zǎoshàng shí-diǎnzhōng yào zài Gǔtíng jié-yùn de liù-hào chūkǒu jiànmiàn. ‘We (the hearer excluded) are going to meet at 10 this Friday morning at Exit 6 of the Guting MRT station.’

5.2.3 Mis-selection Mis-selection happens when words in the same category are wrongly selected. In the L2 data, two subtypes of mis-selection were found. The first subtype includes cases where the learners used yào in places where modals denoting epistemic possibility, not necessity or probability, would have been 119

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 more appropriate, such as huì ‘will’, kěyǐ ‘can’ and néng ‘can’. Five instances of such a mistake were found. Huì, kěyǐ and néng can be used to indicate future possibility, but yào indicates future probability or necessity. That is, yào is used when the event is something planned or highly likely to happen. For example, huì, instead of yào is more appropriate in (25) because it is quite likely for those who work harder to get better jobs and salaries but this is not something that will necessarily happen as planned. (25) ?Bǐ

nǔlì

bié-rén

gēn yònggōng-de rén

compare other-person hard-working and diligent-de

person certainly

yào yǒu

bǐjiàohǎo-de

gōngzuò, bǐjiào-gāo-de

xīnshuǐ.

yao have

better-de

job

salary

compare-high-de

dāngrán

Literally: ‘Those who are more hardworking and more diligent than others certainly must have better jobs and higher salaries.’

(B2)

The second subtype involves yào and xiǎng(yào) ‘want’. Yào can be replaced by xiǎng(yào) when denoting the participant’s internal need, desire, will or volition, but they are not interchangeable all the time. Even when they are interchangeable, there is a subtle difference in meaning. For example, when yào means ‘want, would like to’, it can be replaced by xiǎng(yào) and the sentence is still grammatical, as in (26). However, when only yào is used, (26) indicates that I have strong desire or I am determined to eat cake, but when xiǎng(yào) is used, it means that I embrace this thought and the desire may not be very strong. (26) Wǒ yào / xiǎng(yào) chī dàngāo. I

yao think yao

eat cake

This meaning of yào is similar to want in English, which may be the reason why the L2 learners sometimes used yào in places where xiǎng(yào) was needed and yào could not mean xiǎng(yào). There were twelve instances of such an error found in the L2 data. Although yào can be replaced with xiǎng(yào) in some contexts with slight meaning change, there are still differences in their patterns. One of the differences is that xiǎng(yào) can be preceded and modified by manner adverbs such as hàoqíde ‘curiously’ or degree adverbs such as hěn ‘very’ and zhēn ‘really’, but yào cannot. This is the reason why sentences like (27) and (28) are ungrammatical.

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(27) *Wǒ

hěn-hàoqíde

I

yào kàn nǐ

zhǎng-de zěnmeyàng,

very -curiously yao see you grow-de how

yīnwèi

lián

because even

nǐ-de

zhàopiàn wǒ dōu

you-gen photo

I

all

méi kàn-guò. neg see-guo

‘I curiously want to know how you look because I haven’t even seen any of your photos yet.’

(B1)

(28) *Yǒu yí-bù diànyǐng wǒ hěn have

one-cl movie

I

very

yào

kàn.

yao

watch

‘There’s a movie that I wanted to watch very much.’ (A2) There were other instances where xiǎng(yào) was needed and yào couldn’t mean xiǎng(yào). For example, in (29), the learner intended to use yào to mean xiǎng(yào) ‘want’, but in this context, the most appropriate interpretation of yào is a participantexternal one ‘it is necessary…’ while the meaning targeted by the learner is a participant-internal one. That is the reason why (29) is not acceptable. (29) *Háiyǒu yīnwèi

wǒmen

moreover because we shì xūyào yīnyuè-de be

need

dōu

méi-yǒu

shōuyīnjī,

all

neg-have

MP3.player but many

biǎoyǎn,

yào zhīdào

music-gen performance yao know

yǒu-méi-yǒu

kěyǐ

jiè

wǒmen

lái

have-neg-have

can

lend

we

come use

yòng

ér

hěnduō

lǎoshī teacher yí-xià. one-cl

Literally: ‘Moreover, because we don’t have an MP3 player and there are many performances that need music. It is necessary (for us) to know whether (you) teacher can lend us one to use.’ (B1) Intended: (We) would like to know whether (you) teacher can lend us one to use.’

5.2.4 Misordering The L2 learners sometimes made word order errors when they used yào. Eight instances of such a mistake were found in the L2 data. All the errors resulted from a misordering of yào with adverbials. For example, when a directional phrase like cóng Àozhōu ‘from Australia’ in (30) co-occurs with yào, the directional phrase should follow yào instead of preceding it. That is why (30) is not acceptable. 121

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 (30) *Míngtiān wǒde fù-mǔ tomorrow

my

cóng

À ozhōu yào

lái

le.

father-mother from

Australia yao

come le

‘Tomorrow my parents are coming from Australia.’ (A2) Besides, when participant-internal yào occurs with a time adverbial, the ordering of yào and the time adverbial may give rise to a difference in meaning. If yào precedes the time adverbial, it indicates the participant’s desire and can be replaced with xiǎng(yào) ‘want’. If yào follows the time adverbial, it indicates something planned. The last sentence in (31), where yào precedes the time adverbial měi-tiān xiàwǔ sān-diǎn ‘three o’clock every afternoon’, means “we want to practice at three every afternoon”. If this was the intended meaning, yào means ‘want’ and can be replaced with xiǎngyào ‘want’. However, according to the context, what the student wanted to tell the teacher was that they would practice their crosstalk at three every afternoon. That is, their practice was something planned or scheduled. In this case, yào should occur after the time adverbial, as in (31’), and this yào can be omitted but cannot be replaced with xiǎngyào. Although (31) is still acceptable if yào is omitted, we consider it an example of misordering error than a case of addition error because the error was not resulted from the addition of yào but from adding yào before the time adverbial, a misordering problem, and that made the meaning different from the intended meaning. (31) Bú-shì neg-be tīng

shuō yào nín gěi wǒmen

xiě,

say yao you give we

write but-be say

wǒmen

listen we

liànxí,

we

gěi wǒmen píngjià

practice give we

*Wǒmen yào měi-tiān

ér-shì shuō

xiàwǔ

yao every-day afternoon

yao you

xiàngshēng zěnmeyàng.

evaluation crosstalk sān-diǎn

jiàoshì

center

classroom practice

how

zài guó-yǔ

three-o’clock in

zhōngxīn bā-líng-qī eight-zero-seven

yào nín

nation-language

liànxí.

‘It is not that we want you to write (the crosstalk dialogue) for us, but we would like you to listen to our crosstalk and give us comments. We “want” to practice in Room 807 at Mandarin Center at three o’clock every afternoon.’ (B1) Intended: ‘We will practice (the crosstalk) in Room 807 at Mandarin Center at three every day.’

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(31’) Wǒmen měi-tiān we

xiàwǔ

sān-diǎn

(yào) zài guó-yǔ

every-day afternoon three-o’clock yao

zhōngxīn bā-líng-qī

jiàoshì

center

classroom practice

eight-zero-seven

in

nation-language

liànxí.

‘We will practice the crosstalk in Room 807 at Mandarin Center at three o’clock every afternoon.’

5.3 Summary and discussion The error types and subtypes are summarized in Table 5. Table 5 Summary of the error types Error type

Sub-type

A2

B1

B2

C1

total

1

4

0

0

5

0

3

0

0

3

Guò, le, or ba was wrongly used with yào.

2

3

0

0

5

Yào was wrongly added.

0

3

1

0

4

2

1

1

1

5

4

8

0

0

12

2

6

0

0

8

Yào denoting volitional future was omitted. Omission Yào was omitted in double modal constructions. Addition

Other modals, instead of yào, should be Mis-selection used. Xiǎng(yào), instead of yào, should be used. The relative order of yào and the adverbial Misordering was incorrect.

From the discussion above, we can see that the learners’ errors can be explained from two perspectives— L1 influence and L2 learners’ inadequate knowledge of Mandarin. L1 influence did play an important role. First, double modal verbs are not allowed in most English dialects (Palmer 2001:100). This may result in L1 English speakers’ avoidance in using yào after modals such as yīnggāi ‘should’, and then omission errors occur. Furthermore, English is a language with tense explicitly marked while Mandarin does not have a morpheme specifically used for marking tense only. Therefore, the L1 English learners may mistake yào, a volitional future marker, for a pure future marker and use it when it was not required, i.e., addition errors. Moreover, modal verbs in English may co-occur with the perfect auxiliary have, e.g., would have and could have, which may explain why some L2 learners used 123

臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 aspectual markers such as le and guò with yào. Another possible reason for the L1 English speakers to use the perfective marker guò with yào is that they mistook guò as a past tense marker (Li and Hsieh 2013). The errors made by L2 learners can, of course, be attributed to their inadequate knowledge of the modal yào and the Mandarin language itself. The first and most conspicuous example is the twelve error cases resulted from the learners’ confusing yào with xiǎng(yào). This can be attributed to the fact that yào, especially the participant-internal yào, has several similar but slightly different meanings; in particular, yào and xiǎng(yào) are similar in meaning and sometimes interchangeable but not always. If learners do not have enough knowledge to delineate the meanings of yào and xiǎng(yào) and the contexts in which they can be used, errors may occur. Similarly, the learners’ difficulty in learning the epistemic yào, denoting probability or estimation, was caused by the difficulty in distinguishing yào from modals denoting epistemic possibility, such as huì, kěyǐ and néng. In addition, though some of the learners may have been influenced by their L1 and misused yào as a future tense marker when it should not have been used, as mentioned above, some other learners seemed to know that tense is not marked in Mandarin and so they omitted yào at times when yào was required, perhaps also assuming yào a future tense marker. This suggests that the learners did not have a full grasp of the grammar of Mandarin. Moreover, the L2 learners seemed to have difficulty in putting yào and the time or directional adverbials in the targeted order and L1 interference didn’t seem to be relevant here. The only possible explanation is that the learners were not familiar with the word order in Mandarin.

6. Pedagogical implications and limitations of the study We have examined and analyzed English speakers’ acquisition of the modal verb yào in Mandarin Chinese by using the L2 learner corpus data and we have some important findings, which may give us valuable pedagogical implications in teaching Mandarin as a second or foreign language. Our findings, along with their pedagogical implications, are summarized as follows. First, participant-internal yào was the most frequently used by the L2 learners, followed by participant-external yào, with epistemic yào being the least frequently used. In addition, the developmental sequence exhibited by the learners of different proficiency levels indicates: participant-internal yào was acquired first, which was followed by participant-external yào, which in turn was followed by epistemic yào. 124


This acquisition order is similar to that of L1’s and the process of grammaticalization— from the concrete to the abstract. The findings suggest that participant-internal yào should be introduced first since it is the most concrete in meaning, participant-external yào should be the second usage to teach, and epistemic yào ought to be the last one introduced since it is the most abstract in meaning. Second, the analysis of the errors made by the L2 learners has revealed that it was hard for the learners to make distinctions among the epistemic modals yào, huì, kěyǐ and néng. Therefore, in a learning Mandarin as a second or foreign language class, the meaning differences among these modal verbs should be explained in detail and illustrated with examples and contexts, e.g., epistemic yào indicating high probability while huì just suggests possibility. Third, the participant-internal yào didn’t seem to be easy to learn either. Its polysemous nature had posed great difficulty for the learners. In particular, they had problems in comprehending yào as a volitional future marker, not a pure future marker, as well as in telling the difference between yào and xiǎng(yào). Yào indicates strong desire or determination while xiǎng(yào) only means that someone embraces a thought and the desire may not be very strong. Syntactically, yào and xiǎng(yào) are different, too. For example, xiǎng(yào) can be preceded by adverbs such as hàoqíde ‘curiously’ but yào cannot. This indicates that the different meanings of yào should be explicitly explained and the similarities and differences between yào and xiǎng(yào) should be clearly delineated. Fourth, the learners had difficulty arranging yào and time/directional adverbials in the proper order to express the intended meaning. For example, yào expresses one’s desire to do something when preceding a time adverbial but it indicates something planned when occurring after the adverbial. This should be explicitly introduced in the textbook. In addition, the teacher has to draw the learner’s attention to the relative word order between yào and different kinds of adverbials. Fifth, the learners’ L1, English, seemed to have some influence on their acquisition of the modal verb yào, namely their avoidance of double modals, their overuse of yào as a pure future marker, and their misuse of yào with perfective aspectual markers le and guò. This points to the need for cross-linguistic comparison between Mandarin and English where there are subtle differences between the two languages. Yeh (2009) investigated the categorization of the Mandarin auxiliary verbs in

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臺灣華語教學研究總第 12 期 Taiwan Journal of Chinese as a Second Language, Vol.12 four Chinese language learning textbooks, including New Practical Chinese Reader (Liu 2002) from China, Integrated Chinese (Liu et al. 1997) from USA, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (NTNU 2008) and Far East Everyday Chinese (Yeh 2007) from Taiwan. Of the five points mentioned above, only the first two are covered in these major CFL/CSL textbooks (Yeh 2009:130) and the last three are not covered at all. We hope our findings can be implemented in CFL/CSL teaching and textbook writing as well as in the preparation of supplementary materials. This is a study based on a learner corpus. Through this study, we have a better understanding of the meanings and functions of the modal verb yào in Mandarin Chinese and the developmental sequence and learning difficulties of the L2 learners whose L1 is English. However, there are some limitations. First, this is a corpus-based study. In the corpus, errors are not marked. It is difficult to find all the cases where yào was omitted or replaced by other words. For example, Yeh (2009) found that learners may use huì and xiǎng to replace yào. But Yeh’s study was based on data from learners of different L1 backgrounds and the reasons behind the mis-selection cannot be obtained without more detailed language-specific experimental study. Second, what has been examined in this study is production data, which is only a subset of the learner’s overall performance. Comprehension data should also be considered. Third, the data in the corpus is not evenly distributed among the four proficiency levels, the amount contributed by the C1-level learners being especially low. Despite these limitations, it is hoped that our analysis of the meanings of the modal yào and our findings about the L1 English learners’ difficulties and developmental sequence will be beneficial to L2 learners of Mandarin Chinese and serve as an important reference to the teaching of Mandarin as a second or foreign language.

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英語母語者習得漢語能願動詞「要」之研究李臻儀、謝妙玲國立臺灣師範大學英語學系

摘要本研究檢視了漢語能願動詞「要」的語意特性，並分析了中央研究院平衡語料庫及一以線上寫作測驗方式收集語料所建構的中介語語料庫，以探討英語為母語之學習者習得「要」的情形。「要」的用法根據它的情態意義可分為三種類型：認知情態、參與者內部情態及參與者外部情態。本研究主要發現有二：（a）表參與者內部情態的「要」最常出現於二語語料中，其次為表參與者外部情態的「要」，使用頻率最低的為認知情態的「要」；此二語習得過程與一語習得過程及語法化的過程相符合。（b）表參與者內部情態的「要」之使用率隨著學習者的能力增加而降低，而表參與者外部情態的「要」之使用率則隨著學習者的能力增加而升高。本研究進一步將「要」的偏誤分為四種類型：遺漏、誤加、取代、錯序，並以分析結果為據提出教學上的啟示，結果顯示在教學實務上，母語對學習者的影響需加以注意，而學習者本身漢語知識的不足也會導致偏誤的發生。希冀本研究的發現及偏誤分析可以對以漢語為第二語言或外語的教學有所貢獻。關鍵詞：能願動詞「要」、二語習得、中介語語料庫、漢語、英語

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