Word Order and Syntactic Structures

In this chapter, we will examine second language acquisition of Chinese word order and syntactic structures. First, we will introduce the main characteristics of Chinese (morpho)syntax: (a) it lacks morphological inflections; (b) it is a topic-prominent and discourse-oriented language; (c) it is a radical pro-drop language; (d) it has some unique structures like the 把 bǎ and 被 bèi structures. These characteristics combined together make Chinese a relatively flexible language in terms of word order, which leads to errors in L2 Chinese syntax. Second, we will review L2 Chinese studies on word order and syntactic structures. Third, we will briefly discuss the implications of L2 Chinese findings on teaching methodology.