英文摘要 |
This study investigated the uses of Mandarin conjunctions by local high school students in Lancang County, Yunnan, China. Fifty-six students, whose first language is Lahu, participated in this study. Lahu, a Tibeto-Burman language, has a SOV (subject-object-verb) word order that differs from Mandarin's SVO order. We studied how the syntactic differences between conjunctions in Lahu and Mandarin reflect Lahu grammar's influence on students' Mandarin. We used a survey of acceptability judgments on typical Mandarin sentences and Lahu-flavored Mandarin sentences in five types of conjunction structures proposed by the research team. Across the types of conjunctions, students' acceptability judgments did not show clear differences between Mandarin and the Lahu-flavored Mandarin sentences, although some students seemed to be aware of the unique status of clause-final conjunctions, which never occur in standard Mandarin and thereby resulted in lower acceptance rates. Critical differences were found in accuracy; students tended to prefer sentences with the object preceding the verb, which is a fundamental OV order for Lahu but not for Mandarin. Therefore, it appears that the OV order exhibited in Lahu has been pervasively carried over to students' Mandarin. Moreover, students were not aware of the structural differences of conjunctions used in the two languages and could not accurately identify correct Mandarin sentences. Based on our results and our examination of the 18 textbooks currently adopted by local high schools, we provided concrete suggestions about how the fundamental word order differences can be emphasized in local Mandarin language curricula to help improve students' awareness of the linguistic differences between Lahu and Mandarin to efficiently advance their Mandarin proficiency. More research will still be needed to better address issues related to the languages and the language learning in this unique community. |