论文总字数：29098字

摘 要

母语迁移是影响二语习得的一个重要因素。本篇论文基于语言迁移理论，对比分析论和他人的研究成果。母语的干扰在词汇、语法、翻译等方面都有所体现。首先介绍并阐述母语迁移的定义和分类;其次用不同例句分析英语词汇方面的母语干扰现象，并且探讨导致这些干扰现象的具体原因，主要概括为词性、词义和搭配不当的干扰；再次针对分析结果提出学习方法: 扩大词汇量，增强对英汉语言差异的敏感性并且利用母语正迁移。最后以期能帮助英语学习者意识到此类经常发生的错误，并尽量避免或改正，从而帮助学习者提高词汇学习的效率。

关键词：英语词汇习得；母语干扰；迁移

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Definition and Categories of Transfer 2

2.1 Definition of Transfer 2

2.2 Classification of Transfer 3

3. Mother Tongue Interference on English Vocabulary Acquisition 3

3.1 The Interference of the Part of Speech 3

3.2 The Interference of Lexical Meanings 6

3.3 The Improper Collocation of Words 7

4. Suggestions 8

4.1 Enlarge the Vocabulary 8

4.2 Strengthen Sensitivity to the Differences Between Two Languages 9

4.3 Utilize Positive Transfer of Mother Tongue 9

5. Conclusion 9

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

English learning has been a hot and popular trend nowadays. Then mother tongue transfer is considered to be of critical importance to English learning. But the role of mother tongue in a second language learning has been a controversial issue for a long time. Ellis thought the second language acquisition is strongly affected by the learner’s first language and classified language transfer into positive transfer and negative transfer (Ellis, 1994:19). And Lado found out that learners largely rely on their already acquired mother tongue and affirmed the transfer of mother tongue in the foreign language learning (Lado，1957：18). As Lado and Ellis put it, the transfer of mother tongue is inevitable but has certain research value. British linguist McCarthy once claimed “ no matter how well a student learns grammar, no matter how successfully he masters the sounds, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication cannot happen in any meaningful way (Clark, 1993: 33). The famous linguist David Wilkins also pointed out, “Without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.” (Wilkins，1972：111), so vocabulary can be viewed as the foundation of language and play an important role in a second language learning. Learners are more likely to transfer language rules of mother tongue to the other language, thus they will find the interference resulting from the differences between two languages’ vocabulary. In view of such a situation, the differences will be analyzed in three aspects: the part of speech, the lexical meaning and words collocation in order to conduct a detailed study of the classic mistakes in the English vocabulary acquisition. In a word, this paper based on the theory of language transfer and comparative analysis analyzes the interference of mother tongue over English vocabulary acquisition and endeavors to seek practical and effective methods for most English learners to solve problems in the language learning.

Numerous scholars conducted relevant researches at home and abroad. Li Yani finds out the reasons why learners commit so many vocabulary errors can be summarized as follows: on one hand, native learners lack the knowledge of the differences between mother tongue and a second language; on the other hand, learners use the literal meaning to translate without considering the context (Li Yani, 2012:78). She also gives some strategies to reduce the interference of mother tongue, but the deficiency is that the causes of transfer errors at the lexical level are not fully analyzed. Furthermore, the suggestions focused on improving teaching methods but neglected the roles of learners themselves. Hao Qian studied the negative transfer of mother tongue on English vocabulary acquisition (Hao Qian, 2011:11). She thought that the transfer of mother tongue can be deemed as the transfer of culture and word-using habits, but she only analyzed the interference from lexical meanings including cultural and referential meanings. How to reduce the interference of mother tongue on English vocabulary has not been put forward in her paper. Another scholar Wang Dongxia discussed the interference of lexical meanings and improper words collocation, but she neglected the interference of part of speech (Wang Dongxia, 2005:18). In the study, she makes a conclusion that the transfer of mother tongue is unavoidable. The positive transfer of mother tongue facilitates English learning, but negative transfer causes difficulties for language learners. Thus this paper will discuss the interference of mother tongue on English vocabulary from three aspects: interference of the part of speech, lexical meanings and improper words collocation. Besides, study strategies including strengthening comparative analysis, reciting the words and utilizing the positive transfer of mother tongue will be also put forward.

2. Definition and Categories of Transfer

Language transfer has been a hot issue for many years in the second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. From the point of historical background, the study of language transfer has so far experienced three periods (Dai Weidong and Wang Dong, 2002:1). Obviously the first stage began in the 1950s and language transfer played an essential role in the theory of second language acquisition at that time. Furthermore, language transfer was associated with the behaviorism theory, which was regarded as the theoretical basis of comparative analysis. Then the second stage was influenced by Chomsky’s universal grammar theory starting from the end of the 60s to 70s. Many linguists snubbed and belittled the language transfer. Nevertheless, transfer once again became a popular topic in language teaching and an important strategy for language learning in the third stage which dated back to the last 70 years. Numerous scholars reinforced the understanding of transfer from the aspects of psychology, language and society at that time, but there are many theories and practical problems still haunting us now.

2.1 Definition of Transfer

As Miao Jie and Ni Xiaogang put it, transfer is a psychological term, which refers to “ previous knowledge being extended to the area of new knowledge, i.e. the influence which the learning or remembering of done thing has on the learning and remembering of another thing” (Miao Jie and Ni Xiaogang, 2000:13). Odlin pointed out that transfer is the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the mother tongue and a second language (Odlin, 2001:104) . In general, transfer was the outcome of lack of new language and dependence on previous knowledge. It is apparent that previous knowledge influences the new knowledge acquisition more or less.

2.2 Classification of Transfer

Generally, transfer can be classified into two categories: positive transfer and negative transfer. Linguists Dulay Burt and Krashen offered a “definition of negative and positive transfer as: those instances of transfer which results in errors because the old, habitual language behavior is different from the new one that is being learnt which is termed as negative transfer, or the correct linguistic performance because the linguistic habits is the same as the old one, which is termed as positive transfer”(Dulay and Krashen, 1982: 101).

In other words, when some features of mother tongue and the foreign language are the same or similar, the knowledge of mother tongue will produce positive effects to facilitate the foreign language learning. Such a kind of facilitation is called positive transfer. Negative transfer results from differences between the mother tongue and a second language, which causes difficulties and mistakes during the course of learning. It probably tends to produce negative effects to interfere with foreign language learning, which is always regarded as a cause of errors about word selection. As negative transfer is considered to be blamed for error occurrences, to some degree, interference can be equal to negative transfer in the foreign language learning.

3.Mother Tongue Interference on English Vocabulary Acquisition

In applied linguistics, foreign language teaching methods always focus on the interference with the choice of vocabulary. Foreign language learners sometimes fail to select proper vocabulary due to the interference of the collocation, the lexical meanings, and the part of speech. Learners try different study strategies to reduce the interference and better acquire the English vocabulary.

3.1The interference of the Part of Speech

In terms of the part of speech, English and Chinese share the similarities and differences. Although both have nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and pronouns, Chinese does not have articles and as a consequence, learners are not highly sensitive to the changes. Besides, many English and Chinese vocabulary has more than one part of speech and can be used as different language elements in a sentence, and morphologic changes of the part of speech in Chinese is less obvious than that in English, so learners tend to make such mistakes as misuse, mix and poor judgment. The interference of the part of speech is analyzed from the nouns, verbs, adjectives, articles etc.

3.1.1The Interference of Nouns

The most common phenomenon is that the nouns are misused as verbs. The reason why learners often make such mistakes is that they use their previous knowledge of mother tongue to understand and to use English words without considering the difference between nouns and verbs. As we all know, the forms of verbs and nouns in Chinese do not need to change in most cases, but in English, the form of a verb in a sentence is different from that of a noun. Besides, the same form in English happened only in few cases. This type of misuse has a lot to do with the interference of mother tongue in a second language learning.

(1) We ability to do the job. (They are able to do the job.) (Du Jianxiu, 2012:69) Obviously the following example is a typical error of nouns which are misused as verbs. Vocabulary “ability” in the sentence is a noun, but the writer was puzzled by the part of the speech in English and misused the noun as a verb.

In addition, we can discover some errors about the plural nouns influenced by Chinese in English. For example, Chinese sometimes only needs to put modifiers ahead of the nouns to indicate plural nouns, but in English, the nouns are in need of becoming plural forms except for the uncountable nouns, such as some girls (一些女生), many years (许多年), several dogs (几只小狗). “一些”，“许多” and “几只”in Chinese are used to qualify nouns which need not any change to express plurality. But nouns in English need to pay attention to singular variations. Besides, nouns in Chinese have no distinct singular or plural variants and mostly are reflected by the quantifiers before nouns or “们” after nouns. English words are classified into countable nouns with singular variations, and uncountable nouns with no obvious changes. English is strict to require countable and uncountable nouns in contrast with Chinese which seems to have no such strict rules. It is common occurrence that learners make a mistake in this regard owing to the difference between Chinese and English, because those variation rules are still difficult for learners to remember or use in practice.

3.1.2The Interference of Verbs

In general, the verbs of English is far more complicated than those of Chinese. In English, verbs are usually divided into transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. Most English verbs are transitive verbs while some of transitive verbs can also be used as intransitive verbs at the same time such as like, help and live. Learners not only need to comprehend the part of speech of a verb but also make it clear that the verb is transitive or intransitive in the sentence. In addition, learners also need to focus on analyzing verbs in Chinese, because many learners are not able to completely grasp the difference between verbs in English and Chinese. As a result, they make such mistakes caused by the interference of previous knowledge. An example is:

(2) I attended to (attended) the corporate meeting (Du Jianxiu, 2012:70). In fact, “attend” and “attend to” absolutely mean different things completely in English. In general, the transitive verb “attend” means being present at meetings, church services, university. But “attend to” differs from “attend” and means working for or being a servant to and taking seriously.

In another situation, verbs are commonly misused as nouns in English, which is interfered by the transfer of mother tongue. With the change of part of speech, morphological changes in Chinese verbs are not obvious, but verbs in English need morphological changes. Therefore, many learners influenced by mother tongue select vocabulary without considering part of speech and morphological changes.

(3) Customers likes our produce (products) very much. (Du Jianxiu, 2012:70). According to different rules and modes in different languages, Chinese“产品”do not need any morphological change despite of different kinds of part of speech while “produce” must be corrected as “products” in the sentence. “product” is usually defined as commodities offered for sale. The part of speech of “produce” is more complex than that of “product”. When “produce” is used as a noun, it describes fresh fruits and vegetable grown for the market and is inconsistent with the sentence. Besides, “produce” is often used as a verb which means creating or making something.

3.1.3 The Interference of Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence. Adjectives nearly always appear immediately before the noun or noun phrase that they modify. A typical error caused by the interference of adjectives is mainly the misuse of comparative and superlative forms. We use the comparative form to compare two things and the superlative form to compare three or more things. In English, the inflected suffixes –er and –est form most comparatives and superlatives, although we need –ier and –iest when a two-syllable adjective ends in y; otherwise we use more and most when an adjective has more than one syllable. Different from English, Chinese reflects comparative and superlative forms through more (更) and most (最). The nouns and pronouns in Chinese described or modified by adjectives do not need any morphological change. As it is difficult for English learners to completely control all the rules, the following errors are always encountered in English learning: one is the mistakes of form variations, the other is the lack of an article (the) in the superlative forms. As follows:

(4) The good after-sales service can make us more rich (richer). (Du Jianxiu, 2012:70)

(5) The customers hope we can offer (the) best after-sales service.(Du Jianxiu, 2012:70)

3.1.4 The Interference of Articles

The usage of articles in English causes difficulties for learners, because there are no articles in Chinese. The concept of articles in English is often described through connecting numerals, or referential pronouns, with classifiers in the Chinese language (Peng Si, 2012: 112). A survey conducted by Matriculation students in Singapore university shows that 50% of the article errors are omissions (Xie Chao, 2010:153).

(6) I bought (a) same dictionary as she bought (Peng Si, 2012:112). From the example, the “dictionary” is a singular noun but lack the article “a”.

Many syntax errors in English cause problems as follows to learners at the beginning. When we need definite or indefinite articles? Whether the words need articles? How to distinguish the usage of articles “a” and “an”? English articles are classified into definite article (the) and indefinite article (a/an). Definite articles are specially used to mean specific something or somebody while indefinite articles refer to something or somebody in general. For most English language beginners, when to use and how to choose articles still has been problems in learning. Even though learners have learnt the grammar about articles, maybe they still feel confused about the use of articles in English.

3.1.5The Interference of Prepositions

As a matter of fact, both Chinese and English have prepositions, but English prepositions are far more complicated. Intransitive verbs require specific prepositions to gain an object, but Chinese lacks equivalent rules as those in English. Learners simply make literal translations and tend to lack prepositions or use incorrect ones.

(7) Now I am (in) New York to join the electronic products fair (Du Jianxiu, 2012:72). The writer simply made literal translations from Chinese so that he neglected the preposition “in”.

3.2 The Interference of Lexical Meanings

Catford classified meaning as formal meaning and contextual meaning (Catford, 1865:110). Lexical meanings are not simple combination of words and need to consider contextual meaning. A word in one language may have completely different meanings in another language, and therefore one word in one language may have several equivalents in another language.

(8) Our new products welcome by (are popular among) children under 10-year-old (Du Jianxiu, 2012:72). Although Chinese“受欢迎” can be translated into “welcome” or “be popular with”, they have differences in connotation. The word “welcome” in the sentence means receiving someone, but the sentence wants to indicate the popularity of snacks. Thus the collocation “ be popular among” is more suitable than “ welcome” in the sentence.

(9) I like to watch a group or activity for a while before I join (join in) (Du Jianxiu, 2012:70). The word “join” means becoming a part or member of organization or institution, but the phrase “join in” means taking part in activities. As a result, although “join” and “join in” have the same literal meanings in Chinese, they are mixed without considering contextual meaning.

(10) We learn much more advanced knowledge from books (gain/ acquire)(Liu Yueyue, 2013:73).According to the Oxford Dictionary, “learn” means gaining knowledge or skill by study, experience or being taught. So the vocabulary “learn” contains the meaning of gaining language.

3.3The Improper Collocation of Words

The ways and habits of collocation in different languages are not the same, so the interference of mother tongue may cause wrong understanding and usage of collocation in English. Collocation requires the restriction on how vocabulary can be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together(Li Yani, 2012: 80). As English learners are not familiar with acceptable usage, they always write or speak Chinese English (Chinglish). Chinese English or Chinglish refers to English expressed in a typical Chinese pattern or affected by Chinese way of thinking.

(11) They hope we can provide good quality after-sales service.(Du Jianxiu, 1012:72). Obviously the sentence wants to express the high quality service with the adjective “good”, but in English, phrase “ high quality” is frequently used.

(12) She was hospitalized with a heavy wound on the back. (Kang Jin, 2008:51). In Chinese, “重”can form a number of phrases, such as 重伤, 重负, 重创 and重任. One word in one language is not simply equivalent to another word in a second language, which causes the improper collocation in the sentence. So the “heavy” is not suitable for the phrase and should be changed into “serious”.

If learners are acquainted with the cultural difference or regular collocation, they tend to make proper collocation easily in the translation. Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language, and culture to the foreign language (Lado, 1957:57). So native English speakers master the knowledge of collocation based on life experience and are affected by language environments around. Unfortunately in terms of language environments and life experience, Chinese learners have less advantageous conditions than native speakers. Learners tend to focus on the meaning of English words and seldom consider their contextual meaning in fact, so they are more inclined to express in Chinese English (Chinglish) pattern caused by the interference of mother tongue.

4. Suggestions

The interference of mother tongue can’t possibly be eliminated completely in the English vocabulary acquisition, so we should try our best to reduce the interference by three ways as follows. Here are some suggestions to contribute to students’ vocabulary learning abilities.

4.1 Enlarge the vocabulary

In a certain extent, vocabulary size as foundation of language represents one’s English level. To some degree, enlarging the vocabulary can reduce the interference of mother tongue, because it is a good way for learners to grasp the part of speech, the lexical meaning and proper collocation. Some suggestions are put forward to enlarge the vocabulary as follows. At first, learners make most use of rules of pronunciation to recite and spell words, because most vocabulary in English conforms with the rules. But what you needs to make sure is that every word pronounces accurately. Secondly, a dictionary is an invaluable aid in learning new vocabulary, which offers learners right annotation and usage. At the same time, learners can acquire a large number of new vocabulary from the dictionaries, such as Oxford Dictionary, Collins Dictionary and Webster’s Dictionary. Lastly, it is common that many teachers encourage students to widen reading scope where vocabulary is acquired through the context. Reading English-language books, magazines and newspaper will help you to enlarge the vocabulary. Besides, compared with reciting the words, reading is less boring and dull than the recitation. Maybe there are some other methods not mentioned enlarging the vocabulary, but the ultimate aim of English vocabulary acquisition is to make use of vocabulary correctly.

4.2 Strengthen Sensitivity to the Differences Between Two Languages

We can find the similarities and difference between two languages by comparative analysis. Scholars who have made early studies about language transfer considered that learners could avoid the interference of mother tongue effectively, if they fully understand the differences between their mother tongue and a second language, or the potential influence by making a contrastive analysis of the two language (Peng Si, 2012:113). When learners are sensitive to the differences between two languages, they are more familiar with the usage and meanings of vocabulary. Due to the incomplete equivalents between two languages, learners can make contrast analysis of vocabulary between Chinese and English to strengthen sensitivity to the differences. Therefore, learners had better compare the Chinese vocabulary with English vocabulary so that learners figure out the internal difference and turn negative transfer into positive transfer.

4.3 Utilize Positive Transfer of Mother Tongue

All languages in the world have some common features such as the same classification of words and sentences. For example, we can say “9点” in Chinese while we say “nine o’clock” in English. Generally speaking, the positive transfer results from the similarities between two languages and exists in vocabulary acquisition. So it is helpful for English learners to make most use of these similarities to facilitate our English vocabulary acquisition and promote the understanding of new knowledge based on previous knowledge. According to other previous studies, we find that the positive transfer of mother tongue produces the understanding of English based on our previous knowledge, because some abstract vocabulary can be further explained by mother tongue. Learners can analyze and utilize the similarities of m in Chinese and English vocabulary to produce transfer of mother tongue. For example, some Chinese and English words are expressed in the same way, such as cold-blooded (冷血的), break one’s hearts (伤了某人的心）and upside down (上下颠倒).

5. Conclusion

As is discussed above, a second language acquisition is a complex psychological process including many factors, and vocabulary is an indispensable part in the English learning. The interference of mother tongue on English vocabulary acquisition is inevitable, especially in the early stages of learning English, but English learners can enlarge the vocabulary, utilize positive transfer of mother tongue and strengthen the sensitivity to the differences between two languages. Learners should study all the aspects where the interference of mother tongue on English vocabulary acquisition and use some effective strategies to inhibit the negative transfer and make progress in second language vocabulary acquisition.

Works Cited

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