2012/11/16 by Boping Yuan, Esuna Dugarova · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · #EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1017/s0272263112000332
openalex publication_date 2012/11/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Although wh -words generally stay in situ in Chinese wh -questions, they can be topicalized. However, the wh -topicalization is determined at the syntax-discourse interface and has to be governed by discourse conditions; only discourse-linked (D-linked) wh -words can be topicalized, but non-D-linked ones cannot. This article reports on an empirical study that investigated English speakers’ second language (L2) acquisition of Chinese wh -topicalization. The results of an acceptability judgment test indicate that advanced English speakers are sensitive to the discourse condition that governs the syntactic derivation of wh -topicalization in Chinese, as they were found to be able to make the distinction in their L2 Chinese by allowing D-linked, but not non-D-linked, wh -elements to topicalize. However, these results also indicate that wh -determiner phrases (DPs) and wh -noun phrases (NPs) differ in their sensitivity to presupposition background information in L2 Chinese wh -topicalization, and it is argued that the availability of the deictic feature in the wh -element involved is a variable affecting the D-linking properties of wh -elements in the development of L2 Chinese wh -topicalization, and this seems more likely to be a representational deficit than a processing problem.