Effects of Structural Priming and Lexical Residual Activation on the Acquisition of the English “Noun + Relative Clause” by L1 Chinese Learners
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This study investigated L1 Chinese learners’ acquisition of the English “Noun + Relative Clause（N + RC）” based on Structural Priming (SP)(Bock,1986; Bock & Griffin, 2000) and Lexical Residual Activation (LRA)(Cleland, 2003). It was hypothesized that, based on SP, when L1 Chinese learners were primed by the English “N+ RC”, when the priming and the target structures shared different head nouns, they would produce more “N+ RC” than when they were primed by the English “Adj + Noun (Adj + N)”, and the priming effect was significant. Also, based on SP and LRA, when the priming and the target structures shared the same head noun, the increasing priming effect would be enhanced. The participants were 90 first year non-English major Chinese students attending Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, and 10 native English speakers. A picture description task was used to elicit data. The results confirmed the hypotheses. The study also found that there were different SP and LRA effects for L1 speakers and L2 speakers in that, while L2 speakers were significantly affected, L1 speakers were not. A long-term priming effect was found indirectly after the priming “Simple Sentence”. The study contributed to Second Language Acquisition in that SP and LRA would facilitate L1 Chinese learners’ acquisition of the English “Noun + Relative Clause”, although this structure is non-existent in the learners’ L1. The study also gave pedagogical implications in that the application of SP and LRA would facilitate the acquisition of the L2 structures.
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