The Acquisition of Some Properties of the BA Construction by English- speaking Learners of Chinese

There have been numerous studies on the linguistic properties of the BA construction in Mandarin Chinese and the semantic meanings of this construction. However, there have not been as adequate studies on the acquisition of the BA, especially by L2 Chinese learners. This study examines the acquisition of some linguistic properties of the BA construction by the nature of those properties: some are pure syntactic, some involve knowledge from the interface of two domains: syntax and semantics. The results indicate that L2 Chinese learners’ performance on properties in the core syntax domain is significantly better than on those at the syntax-semantics interface. However, this advantage is not consistent cross the core syntax domain. L2 Chinese learners’ performances within the core syntax domain are significantly correlated but at different accuracy levels.