Chai Xingsan, Bao Jie
Institute on Educational Policy and Evaluation of International Students, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 13;13:1083574. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1083574. eCollection 2022.
How linguistic distance affects second language acquisition is a major concern in cross-language transfer research. However, no study has explored how systematic differences between Chinese and learners' native language (L1) influences Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition, or how these influences change as Chinese proficiency improves. To address this, we employed the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) index method to multidimensionally quantify the linguistic distance between Chinese and L1, and examined the effect of systematic linguistic distance on acquisition of Chinese character (Quasi-Experiment 1), vocabulary (Quasi-Experiment 2), and grammatical knowledge (Quasi-Experiment 3) in Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners with elementary, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels. We examined a random sample of 58,240 CSL learners' test scores from 24 different L1 backgrounds, and analyzed 2,250 CSL learners' Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar scores in each of the three quasi-experiments. We found that closer linguistic distance facilitated more favorable Chinese character and vocabulary acquisition at elementary, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels, and that the influence of linguistic distance on CSL learners' vocabulary acquisition tended to decrease as Chinese proficiency increased. Finally, linguistic difference did not significantly affect CSL learners' grammar acquisition at elementary proficiency, but as Chinese proficiency improved, an L1 interference effect occurred among CSL learners with a short linguistic distance from Chinese, which hindered grammar acquisition. These results suggest that linguistic distance has differential proficiency-dependent effects on Chinese character, vocabulary, and grammar acquisition.
语言距离如何影响第二语言习得是跨语言迁移研究中的一个主要关注点。然而，尚无研究探讨汉语与学习者母语（L1）之间的系统差异如何影响汉字、词汇和语法习得，或者这些影响如何随着汉语水平的提高而变化。为了解决这个问题，我们采用了《世界语言结构地图集》（WALS）指数方法，从多个维度量化汉语与第一语言之间的语言距离，并考察了系统语言距离对具有初级、中级和高级汉语水平的汉语作为第二语言（CSL）学习者的汉字习得（准实验1）、词汇习得（准实验2）和语法知识习得（准实验3）的影响。我们检查了来自24种不同母语背景的58240名CSL学习者测试成绩的随机样本，并在三个准实验中分别分析了2250名CSL学习者的汉字、词汇和语法成绩。我们发现，在初级、中级和高级汉语水平上，较近的语言距离有助于更有利的汉字和词汇习得，并且语言距离对CSL学习者词汇习得的影响随着汉语水平的提高而趋于降低。最后，语言差异在初级水平时对CSL学习者的语法习得没有显著影响，但随着汉语水平的提高，与汉语语言距离较短的CSL学习者中出现了第一语言干扰效应，这阻碍了语法习得。这些结果表明，语言距离对汉字、词汇和语法习得具有与熟练程度相关的不同影响。
