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A study of Swedish speakers' learning of Chinese noun classifiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2010

Helena H. Gao
Helena H. Gao*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, HSS-03-05, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore637332. helenagao@ntu.edu.sg
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Abstract

Chinese noun classifiers are an obligatory category associated with nouns. Studies have shown that achieving a full understanding and good mastery of Chinese noun classifiers is difficult for both young and adult L2 learners. This study examines the learning strategies used by 30 Swedish adults for a period of two months. Their learning results are compared to 30 bilingual children's production of Chinese noun classifiers. The adult learners exhibit a normal top–down learning fashion, in which they fail to acquire the complex semantic and cognitive meanings embedded in the classifiers. The children, on the other hand, apply cognitive strategies with a bottom–up approach. The adults’ learning of classifiers lags surprisingly far behind their general level of Chinese proficiency. This study can be used as a reference for future studies on the conceptual and cognitive aspects of Chinese language acquisition by speakers whose native languages are not classifier languages.

Keywords

bilingual acquisitionbottom–up strategyChinesecognitive strategyconceptual systemlanguage acquisitionmeasure wordnoun classifiersemantic transparencytop–down strategy
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 33 , Special Issue 2: The Nordic Languages and Second Language Acquisition Theory , October 2010 , pp. 197 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2010

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