The acquisition of Chinese shì...de proper clefts by L1 Italian learners: A corpus-based approach

This study investigates the L2 acquisition of the Chinese shì...de proper cleft (PC) by L1 Italian learners, focusing on their knowledge of syntactic features and usage restrictions in written production. I analyzed data from 106 L1 Italian learners divided by proficiency (beginner, intermediate, advanced) collected in a learner corpus purposely designed to explore the use of PC. Comparable data from 35 native Chinese speakers were also analyzed. Results show that learners use PC significantly less than native speakers, with frequency increasing as proficiency improves. The most common error is the underuse of PC, followed by the overuse of -le sentences. Learners’ tendency to replace PC with -le sentences can be attributed to several factors, including the difference in the way aspect and tense are encoded in Chinese and Italian, and the lack of knowledge about the different information foci between PC and -le sentences. The study supports the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, showing that L1 Italian learners struggle with reassembling the features [+perfective], [+dynamic] and [+given] of PC. Although these features exist independently in learners’ L1, they do not appear in this combination, leading to challenges in the acquisition of PC, often resulting in underuse or misuse of the construction.