The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Accepted Manuscript
Title: The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students
Author: Yi-Fen Yeh, R.M. Joshi, Xuejun Ryan Ji
PII: S0361-476X(15)00045-4
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2015.10.002
Reference: YCEPS 1522
To appear in: Contemporary Educational Psychology
Please cite this article as: Yi-Fen Yeh, R.M. Joshi, Xuejun Ryan Ji, The Development of
Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students, Contemporary Educational Psychology
(2015), http://dx.doi.org/doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2015.10.002.
This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service
to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will
undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its
final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could
affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
1
CHINESE ESL LEARNER'S MA IN L1 AND L2
The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students
Yi-Fen Yeh (corresponding author)
National Taiwan Normal University
yyf521@gmail.com
TEL: 886-277346982
R. M. Joshi
Texas A&M University
mjoshi@tamu.edu
Xuejun Ryan Ji
Page 1 of 41
Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL students 2
Texas A&M University
ryanji329@gmail.com
Highlights
1. Chinese MA includes inflectional, derivational, and compound-word awareness.
2. Higher levels of Chinese MA are associated with higher levels of English MA
3. Students’ compounding awareness is used to process words with word-forming affixes.
4. Associations are found between awareness of inflection and derivation in English.
5. Linguistic knowledge and verbal aptitude are interchangeably used in MA development.
Page 2 of 41
Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL students 3
Abstract
Similar to English words, Chinese words can be viewed as the combination of root morphemes
with either grammatical affixes, word-formation affixes, or other free morphemes. Therefore, it
is logical to argue that Chinese speakers develop knowledge about inflectional and derivational
morphemes similar to speakers of English language. To test this research hypothesis, 287 junior
high school students (grades 7 to 9) were administered morphological awareness tests in both
Chinese and English. Results from the Structural Equation Modeling showed that both
inflectional and derivational awareness of Chinese are necessary (along with an awareness of
compound words) to a construction of Chinese morphological awareness. The students’
awareness of Chinese inflection and derivation is partially explained by their awareness of
Chinese compound words, but there are still features that are uniquely inherent to Chinese
inflection and derivation (in contrast to their counterparts in English). The overall transferring
coefficient from Chinese MA to English MA in this study was .56, which suggests that higher
levels of Chinese MA are associated with higher levels of English MA. Inductive reasoning can
be as important as Chinese MA to the development of English MA, since it supports learners
dealing with morphological features with which they are less familiar (English derivations) and
that share many connections (such as English compounding).
Keywords: Chinese morphological awareness, English morphological awareness, cross language
transfer, inflection, derivation, Mandarin
Page 3 of 41
CHINESE ESL LEARNER'S MA IN L1 AND L2 4
The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students
Morphological awareness (MA) refers to the sensitivity or knowledge that speakers
develop for decoding or encoding words based on their morphemic structures (Carlisle, 1995).
One major part of morphology in Indo-European languages is the discussion of word formation
rules like inflectional or derivational affixation and free morpheme compounding. It was until
the last decade that linguists began analyzing Chinese morphology when attempting to follow the
way linguists categorize word formation in English (Li & Thompson, 2003; Packard, 2000). The
structure of Chinese compound words and Chinese speakers’ MA (which is mainly built on
Chinese compound words) are now of great interest to researchers (Chen, Hao, Geva, Zhu, &
Shu, 2009; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010; Zhang & Koda, 2013). Besides
compound words, Zhang, Lin, Wei, and Anderson (2014) urged the need for analyses of Chinese
words in categories with inflectional and derivational affixes. Native speakers' awareness of
these morphological categories can be considered representative of Chinese morphology, and
how it is formally and functionally different from the morphology of Indo-European languages.
If Chinese MA can be conceptualized as a construct composed of three types of
morphological awareness, Chinese ESL learners' English word acquisition skills are likely
enhanced by their Chinese background. Language learners' acquisition of a second language
develops from skills they acquire from their L1 learning (e.g., Holm & Dodd, 1996; Sparks,
Patton, Ganshow, & Humbach, 2009) or certain linguistic features of that L1 (Akamatsu, 2003;
Clahsen, Felser, Neubauer, Sato, & Silva, 2010; Koda, 2000). Consequently, an inter-language
system or a system approximating that which is used in their L2 could be developed during these
learners' L2 acquisition (e.g., Adjemian, 1983; Gass & Selinker, 1992; Zhang, 1990). Therefore,
Chinese ESL learners probably develop a linguistic system that negotiates the linguistic
Page 4 of 41
similarities and differences between Chinese and English. Knowing more about the
morphological differences between Chinese (L1) and English (L2) and the development of
Chinese-speaking students' MA will help teachers better prepare students to transition between
these two languages.
Word Formation in English
Words in Indo-European languages (to a significant degree with respect to English) can
be composed of inflectional words, derivational words, and compound words; these are in
addition to words composed of single morphemes (Plag, 2003). Inflection refers to formal
changes to stem morphemes (content-bearing) that make them syntactically in agreement with
the words surrounding them within a certain sentence (e.g., plural suffix -s; tense markers -s, -ing,
-ed, -en; comparative and superlative suffixes -er, -est) but that do not alter the stem word's parts
of speech (POS). Derivation refers to vocabulary expansion from stem morphemes that may or
may not alter the POS of such stem morphemes (e.g., –ship in friend-ship, –ity in pur-ity). Word
compounding – the combination of at least two free morphemes – is another way of constructing
English words. English compound words are usually right-headed (e.g., under-estimate; dry-
clean), meaning that the morpheme to the right typically holds the core meaning of the
compound word. The constituent morpheme can be little relevance to the overall meaning (e.g.,
redcap, lazybones, greenhouse; Carstairs-McCarthey, 2002; Fabb, 1998; Nicoladis, 2002).
The development of inflectional rules usually begins with simple rule generation,
overgeneralization, and adjustments that occur from encounters with irregular linguistic elements
(e.g., foots*, goed*; Marcus, Pinker, Ullman, & Hollander, 1992). Derivational knowledge takes
time to acquire, not only because derivations require relational (e.g., teach – teacher) and
syntactic knowledge (e.g., reduce – reduction), but also complex distributional knowledge (Kuo
Page 5 of 41
& Anderson, 2006; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000). The right-headed rule helps English
speakers decode unfamiliar compound words or express new compound ideas, but some
frequently-used compound words generally are not recognized as a combination of two or more
free morphemes (e.g., breakfast and holiday; Berko, 1958). Among these three types of
affixations in English, derivation is the most productive because it can rapidly increase English
learners' vocabulary.
Word Formation in Chinese
The smallest meaningful unit (the morpheme) in Chinese is the character; most modern
Chinese words are compounds of characters (Li & Thompson, 2003; Packard, 2000). Chinese
words are compound in nature at the level of character composition but also character
combination (Li & Thompson, 2003; Perfetti & Tan, 1999; Taft & Zhu, 1997a, 1997b).
Therefore, the tagging of parts of speech (POS) in Chinese words is more accurate when it is
character-based instead of word-based (Ng & Low, 2004). Chinese morphemes are unique, since
they are monosyllabic, isolated, bound-root driven, and lack morphological alternation for
sentence agreement (Packard, 2000). Similar to the inflectional and derivational affixes in
English morphology, Chinese affixes can be further divided into grammatical and word-forming
affixes (Li & Thompson, 2003; Liao, 2014; Packard, 2000, see Table 1). More word-forming
affixes have been found than grammatical affixes (Tang, 1988), but they are still limited in
quantity.
[INSERT TABLE 1 HERE]
Chinese grammatical affixes and word-forming affixes share certain similarities with the
English language. Grammatical affixes, such as the plural and aspect affixes, are similar to their
counterparts in English in that they are syntactically conditioned (Stump, 2005). Grammatical
Page 6 of 41
affixation does not cause the stem morphemes to inflect due to their lack of verb conjugation and
noun declension, as well as the infrequent use of auxiliaries in Chinese. Additionally, a durative
suffix 著 [zhe] that functions like an aspect marker similar to that of –en or –ing in English
cannot be attached to all verbs or used as a clitic (a morpheme that has syntactical characteristics
but is phonologically dependent upon the root morphemes) (Ma, 1985; Myers, Huang, & Wang,
2006). Derivation in Chinese is lexically bounded rather than grammatically driven (i.e.,
meanings change with forms), a condition that also is frequently found in Indo-European
languages. Arcodia (2011, 2012) attempted to differentiate derivational affixation from
compound or inflectional affixation, but he found that the boundary of Chinese derivational
affixation is blurred and unstable. Most of these affixes are still bounded and occupy fixed
positions, possess weak lexical meanings, and form stem morpheme word categories. Therefore,
he suggested that Chinese word-forming affixes be viewed as "affixoids,” "new and developing
affixes," or as a "versatile constituent of compounding" (Arcodia, 2012, p. 99). Though
Chinese morphology does not fit neatly into the English morphological system, we suspect that
Chinese speakers may be able to develop inflectional and derivational awareness from their
experiences with these limited-in-number but functionally similar affixes in Chinese.
The large number and variety of compound words are another unique feature of Chinese
morphology, and one that serves to enhance Chinese speakers’ awareness of compound words.
Strictly speaking, bi-syllabic compounds are the largest group of compounds in the Chinese
language. The formation of compound words is complex because morphemes are made up of
various POS. Approximately 90% of compound nouns have a noun on the right, and 85% of
compound verbs have a verb on the left (Packard, 2000). Compound verbs can be right-headed
(撲滅 [pu1mie4] pounce + die out = extinguish / exterminate), left-headed (衝刺 [chong1ci4]
Page 7 of 41
sprint + prick = spear ahead), or two-headed (吸食 [xi1shi2] breath-in and eat = smoke / suck)
(Ceccagno & Basciano, 2007). Such productive attachment with fewer local constraints
probably leads one to view Chinese as a headless language (Huang, 1997). The complex internal
structures within compound words help speakers of Chinese enhance their word compounding
skills. Chinese speakers may apply these skills to help them decode words with grammatical or
word-forming affixes, since these words are also character compounds though with grammatical
or word-forming references.
Cross-Linguistic Morphological Awareness
Chinese-English bilinguals or Chinese ESL students experience the phenomenon of
cross-linguistic MA transfer from their native language to their new language, and vice versa
(i.e., McBride-Chang, Cheung, Chow, Chow, & Choi, 2006; Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, &
Ramirez, 2011; Zhang, 2013; Zhang & Koda, 2013). However, Chinese ESL students often find
English orthography more difficult than do those who natively speak alphabetic languages
(Akamatsu, 2003; Hamada & Koda, 2008; McBride-Chang et al., 2005). Chinese students are
more likely to pay attention to visual-orthographic information (Wang, Koda, & Perfetti, 2003),
be able to accurately detect semantic inconsistencies in morphologically complex English words
(Koda, 2000), and identify the structure of compound words (Zhang, Anderson, Packard, Wu, &
Tang, 2007; Zhang et al., 2012). Some language-specific morphological features in a second
language (L2) are difficult to fully integrate into a student's MA, which explains why Chinese-
speaking students often are challenged by number agreement and inflectional morphemes
(except -ing ), resulting in repeated inflectional errors in their learning of English (Jiang, 2004;
Lardiere, 1998; Long, 1997). Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) concluded that a transfer of
Page 8 of 41
inflectional awareness (e.g., bound morphemes) occurs between languages that are lexically and
morphologically related.
Language aptitude can be one major ability that assists learners in organizing and sorting
out the linguistic units and features they encounter in L1 and L2. Language aptitude is a central
construct in language learning, and can be employed differently by different persons (Dörnyei &
Skehan, 2003). According to Carroll (1965) and Skehan (1986), language aptitude includes
phonemic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, associative memory, and inductive language-
learning ability. Sparks, Patton, Ganschow, & Humbach (2011) even proposed a conception of
L2 aptitude that includes a componential construct in addition to L1 skills, and confirmed it as a
good predictor of learners' L2 proficiency not only occurring early on but also lasting for a long
time. These aptitudinal abilities mature in learners’ L1 and are used as tools for decoding and
encoding vocabulary in L2. Inductive reasoning, among the various aptitudinal abilities, refers
to the skill that learners commonly use to seek patterns and modify morphological rules in L1
(Berko, 1958; Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997a, 1997b; Skehan, 1991). Language learners in
their L1 acquisition use inductive reasoning to organize vocabulary and generate morphological
rules in a bottom-up fashion; they can also use the inductive reasoning ability that they develop
from the process of L1 acquisition to develop their L2 MA.
Linguistic transfer usually travels from a learner’s stronger language to the language
being learned, which makes greater linguistic benefits available (Zhang, Anderson, Li, Dong, Yu,
Zhang, 2010; Zhang & Koda, 2014). Chinese and English share similar morphological
categories (inflectional affixes, derivational affixes, and compound words), though in different
quantities and with somewhat different affixation rules. This study investigates how Chinese
ESL learners of middle-school age construct their MA in L1 and L2. One research question of
Page 9 of 41
importance to this study is whether Chinese speakers develop their Chinese MA from their
awareness of the three morphological affixations in Chinese, especially when such
morphological categorization is explicit in Indo-European languages but often implicit in
Chinese. The productivity of compounding in Chinese and derivation in English probably
influences how learners read words within the respective language. This study proposes and
explores a cross-linguistic transferring model composed of parallel MA constructs between
Chinese and English (see Figure 1). Language aptitude is measured and examined as a covariate
for the development of Chinese ESL learners' MA in L1 and L2. The findings are expected to
contribute to the literature by describing how Chinese ESL learners develop awareness in three
types of morphological morphology, and how a learner’s L1 background can influence their L2
acquisition.
[Insert Figure 1 about here]
Methods
Participants
The participants in the study were 287 students (99 seventh-graders, 99 eighth-graders,
and 89 ninth graders) from three public schools in urban area in Taiwan. All the participants
were native speakers of Chinese and did not have obvious cognitive or developmental delays. In
Taiwan, English is a mandatory foreign language course for students in grade 3 or higher.
District governments and school principals can decide if their English instruction initiates as
early as from grade one or two. The average length of the English instruction that participants
received from their primary schools was 4.97 years (SD=.99), though it was common to see
students in Taiwan who had begun their English learning as early as kindergarten or who had
learned English informally (e.g., from afterschool activities). Generally, students in middle
Page 10 of 41
school have already developed a high level of Chinese MA and at least a basic to intermediate
level of English MA. Students’ MA levels were considered during selection of the target words
in the construction of the Chinese and English MA tests in this study.
Measurements
Chinese MA tests. All of the target vocabulary on the Chinese MA tests were selected
based on the word frequency, with an emphasis placed on avoiding the ceiling effect that
adolescent students may face with Chinese vocabulary, except with regards to the section entitled
“Chinese Inflectional Morpheme”. An online linguistic corpus database – the Word List with
Accumulated Word Frequency (Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, 2005) – was used to
review the frequency of words. Every 5,000 words, according to their frequency rankings, were
viewed as a stratum, and the target vocabulary set was selected from each stratum.
Chinese inflectional awareness task. This test was developed to measure students’
knowledge of Chinese inflectional morphemes. Students were required to fill in the blank with
an appropriate morpheme, according to the context. The intended morphemes in the 10 test
items include not only grammatical affixes (e.g., 在 [zai4]; 了 [le]) but also a comparative
morpheme (i.e. 越 [yue4]) and the superlative morpheme (i.e. 最 [zui4]), according to Li &
Thompson (2003). For example, students need to fill in the question “I studied (_____) late last
night, which made me almost miss the bus in the morning” with a resultative potential infix 得,
which is an adverbial morpheme in Chinese but has no corresponding word in English. The
internal consistency reliability was .58.
Chinese derivational awareness tasks. Two tasks were designed to measure Chinese
derivational awareness. Both required students to demonstrate their level of derivational
knowledge by making the words syntactically and semantically fit into the sentences. Students
Page 11 of 41
were required to complete sentences by making up words from the clue morphemes. The
intended words were composed of specific word-forming affixes (14 items) or high-frequency
morphemes (11 items). Word-forming affixes included nominalizing suffixes, a verbalizing
suffix, negative prefixes, an adverbial suffix, an agentive suffix, and changing adjective prefixes
(see Table 1). One test item, for example, expects students to add a prefix 無 [wu2] non- to the
clue morpheme 憂 [yo1] worry, in the sentence: “His application for the position of state staff is
accepted. The salary is not high, but he will_____ for basic needs in living at least.” The high-
frequency morphemes in this measurement are different from the previously-mentioned word-
forming affixes. They can be content-bearing morphemes (i.e., stem morphemes) in compound
words, and they can also be attached to the stem morphemes for altering the stem morpheme's
POS or status. For example, the clue noun morpheme 目 [mu4] eye becomes a verb if it is
suffixationally attached to the verb morpheme 睹 [du3] see. The internal consistency reliability
of these two tasks were .76 and .61, respectively.
Chinese compound-word awareness tasks. Participants were required to read a sentence
and then paraphrase the underlined phrases by eliminating them into a two-morpheme word in
the task of morpheme combination. For example, students are told to paraphrase an underlined
phrase such as 檢查測量 [jian3cha2 ce4liang2] check and measure into a brief expression 檢測
[jian3 ce4]. Usually students make up these words by retrieving and reorganizing the
morphemes within the underlined phrases, but they are not given hints to do so. The task of
morpheme compounding, which was based on the Morphological Construction Test (McBride-
Chang, Shu, Zhou, Wat, & Wagner, 2003), required students to create a two-morpheme word
based on a previously-given sample word, accompanied by a rationale for how the word is
created. For example, “We call the inability of eyes to see objects as “blindness”; then we call
Page 12 of 41
the inability of ears to hear sounds as “_____.” The Morpheme Combination task measures
students’ sense of word formation, and the Morpheme Compounding task measures their
morpheme compounding ability. The internal consistency reliability for these two tasks were .84
and .82 respectively.
English MA tests. All the words and sentences used in these test items are from the
students’ textbooks. Almost all the words are within the 1,000 essential vocabulary words that
the Ministry of Education in Taiwan officially expects junior high school graduates to acquire.
Only a few words are from the list of 2,000 essential vocabulary words, which is recommended
to be acquired, for junior high school graduates.
English inflectional awareness task. This subtest asks student to fill in the blanks in
sentences by modifying the clue words according to the context. The target inflectional affixes
in this section include tenses, aspects, numbers, and comparative/superlative suffixes. For
example, students might need to modify the word boy by adding a suffix –s to the sentence “Bill
is a boy and John is a boy. They are both _____.” The internal consistency reliability was .77.
English derivational awareness tasks. Word decomposition and word derivation tasks
were modified from the test items used in Carlisle (2000). Each measures students’ ability to
decompose clue words and derive morphemes, respectively, by providing a relevant context.
Students have to detect the grammatical category first by figuring out where the blank is in the
sentence, and then make the appropriate modifications to the clue words. For example, in the
Decomposing Task, students must transform the derived word “density” into its base form
“dense,” for the purpose of making the sentence “The smoke in the room was very _____.”
Conversely, in the Derivational Task, students are required to modify the clue word “farm” with
the suffix “-er” in the sentence “My uncle is a ______.” Both the English Morpheme
Page 13 of 41
Identification Task and the Compound Word Decoding Task were both employed to find out
whether Chinese speaking students read English words holistically or morphemically, and if they
take advantage of morphemes while reading words. They were modified from Ku’s (2001)
subtests for measuring native speakers’ English MA. The internal consistency reliability for
these two tasks were .77 and .85 respectively.
English compound-word awareness tasks. English Morpheme Identification Task
required students to respond to each pair of words by circling YES if they thought the second
word came from the first word in the pair, or NO if it did not. For example, students would
circle YES to the pair “sun” and “sunny,” but NO to the pair “pen” and “penny.” English
Compound Word Decoding Task was composed of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words to test if
students were able to identify real compound words by detecting the morphemes in the word.
The target words were intermixed with ten real compound words, real derived words, pseudo-
compound words, and pseudo-derivatives. Students were instructed to circle YES and then to
write its Chinese meaning, if they can recognize the target words, such as “afternoon.” However,
students were instructed to circle NO if they thought the words were possibly real words but not
sure if words were real in English, such as pseudo-words like "unangry" from which they could
detect the morphemes and interpret it as “not angry.” Or, if they felt the compound word made
no sense (i.e., “sunplay”), they were instructed to circle PS, which stands for pseudo-word. The
internal consistency reliability for these two tasks were .73 and .90 respectively.
Junior High School Students’ Scholastic Aptitude Test. The Junior High School
Students’ Scholastic Aptitude Test (Lu, Wu, & Chien, 2001) is a standardized test designed for
measuring the verbal and mathematical abilities of students in grades seven to nine. We used the
subtests of verbal ability, which contains 50 multiple-choice questions, to evaluate students’
Page 14 of 41
verbal analogy and verbal induction. In the section dealing with verbal analogy, students need to
select a best answer from clothes, shoes, watch, and belt, for the test item: “Head is to hat as feet
is to ____.” As for the section concerning verbal induction, students are asked to select a term
that best describes the mutual category of mice, ants, and rabbits from possible answers like
animals, livestock, insects, and beasts. The correlation consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) for the
two sections is reported as .86 and .91.
Item Validity and Scoring
All of the items on the Chinese MA and English MA tests were reviewed and pilot tested for
this research. The items were examined by two native Chinese speakers who earned their
Master’s degrees in Language Education in the U.S. and who at the time of this study were
teaching English in Taiwan. They were asked to complete items on both the Chinese and
English MA tests and then review the validity of the items; their answers and feedback were used
as guidance for item modifications. After the items were reviewed and modified, a pilot study
was conducted on 15 students in eighth grade and minor modifications were made.
All of the items had one correct answer, and one point was given for each correct answer
(except for two items in the Chinese inflectional awareness task). Both of these items were
designed to measure participants' knowledge of an inchoative suffix (i.e., 起來 [qi3lai2]). It is a
suffix that can also be used solely with the first morpheme (i.e., 想不太起) for the correct answer
想不起來, or with other aspect markers or morphemes that share similar meanings (i.e., 寫起書法
時, 寫著書法時) for 寫起書法來. These alternative answers (listed above) were considered
grammatically and semantically acceptable in Chinese and they offered correct points. Debates
regarding the correctness of the alternative answers were discussed between the two test
Page 15 of 41
reviewers. A total score was calculated for each task and viewed as an indication of the
performance of the target’s awareness.
Procedures
Three instruments for measuring vocabulary and MA were administered. On the first day,
the students were given the Junior High Student Scholastic Aptitude Test (15 minutes), followed
by the Chinese MA Test (40 minutes) and on the second day, the English MA Tests were
administered (40 minutes).
Results
The descriptive statistics and results of the Chinese and English MA tests are presented in
Table 2. Moderate correlations were found between Chinese MA (.42 ≤ r ≤ .71) and English
MA (.52 ≤ r ≤ .75), as shown in Table 3. The inter-correlations among the tasks testing Chinese
MA, English MA, and verbal aptitudes were between .20 and .72.
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Measurement Models for Chinese and English MAs
A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to check the model in which
Chinese MA and English MA were viewed as latent variables estimated by five measurements
independently (see Figure 1), χ2 (33, N=287)=57.51, p<.00, χ2/df ratio=1.75, RMSEA=.05,
CFI=.99, SRMR=.04. Table 4 showed that all indicators had high standardized factor loadings
for these variables. The estimated correlation between the factors was not excessively high
(r=.56), which means we measured Chinese and English MAs as two distinct constructs.
Page 16 of 41
Subsequently, a comparison of the three models via a free parameter model was
conducted; the corresponding path parameters were set to zero in order to explore whether
inflectional or derivational awareness were necessary components of Chinese morphological
awareness. Table 5 illustrates that only the free parameter model had a good overall fit with the
data, while the other models with fixed parameters demonstrated a lack of fit. The good fitting
indexes from the results of both the CFA and model comparisons suggest that Chinese MA
includes inflectional awareness, derivational awareness, and the awareness of compound words.
None can totally be explained by the other. That is, specific knowledge is required when
forming words with grammatical affixes or word-forming affixes and making compound words.
Though these three aspects were shown to be necessary to the formation of Chinese MA,
it was still unsure if a strong type of MA dominated the learners' word decoding. Path analyses
were conducted to investigate how Chinese compounding and English derivation awareness were
influential in learners' decoding of other types of words within the respective languages. Figure
2 shows the results based on regression analyses of the saturated models (CFI=1, RMSEA=0,
χ2=0, df=0). More variances in Chinese speakers’ Chinese derivational awareness, as compared
to Chinese inflectional awareness, were explained by their abilities with regards to morpheme
combination (γ=.59, R2=.34; γ=.55, R2=.30) and morpheme compounding (γ=.67, R2=.45; γ=.67,
R2=.44). Students’ English derivational awareness was found to explain the extent of their
inflectional awareness (γ=.70, R2=.55; γ=.72, R2=.52). These results suggest that Chinese ESL
learners probably use their morpheme compounding awareness to process words with word-
forming affixes, while at the same time these learners are likely to process English words with
inflectional affixes or derivational affixes through a sharing awareness construct.
Page 17 of 41
Structural Equation Models of MA Development
A structural equation model (SEM) was constructed to determine if Chinese students’
native MA facilitated their English MA development. Based on the conceptual mode (see Figure
1), their overall Chinese MA was hypothesized to make a unidirectional contribution to their
development of their English MA, with verbal aptitudes (i.e., induction and analogy) established
as covariates that could simultaneously contribute to MA development in both Chinese and
English. There was no indication of a lack of fit, χ2 (49, N=287)=79.32, p<.010, χ2/df ratio=1.64,
RMSEA=.046, CFI=.99, SRMR=.04. All of the tasks had acceptable loadings (.62 < λ < .88),
which means they were appropriate for use in measuring the latent variables. Figure 3 shows the
estimates of the standardized path coefficients and factor loadings within the model. According
to MacCallum, Browne, & Sugawara (1996), a power of 0.80 for the test of a close fit
(RMSEA<.05) at df = 50 was achieved with a sample size of 214; the sample size of this study
was larger than the required sample size (N=287). Based on the NCP of RMSEA, alpha value,
and df (Kim, 2005), the structural model had an acceptable power rating of .80.
The standardized path coefficient was .56, which suggests that Chinese ESL students'
English MA was predicted by their Chinese MA. Higher levels of Chinese MA were associated
with higher levels of English MA. With regards to the contributions of each subset of the MA,
acceptable factor loadings were found for Chinese MA (λ=.61 to λ=.85) and English MA (λ=.70
to λ=.87). Factor loadings from the two tasks in verbal aptitude highlighted that learners'
development of Chinese MA required more inductive reasoning and analogical skills than did
Page 18 of 41
their English MA. The loading of direct paths from analogy to English MA was not statistically
different from zero (λ=.02), but indirect effects were suspected via Chinese MA.
Transfers between Subsets of Two MA
Parallel awareness of two MA and how both are impacted by verbal aptitude were also
explored. A total of five latent variables were constructed, including Chinese derivational
awareness, Chinese compound-word awareness, English derivational awareness, English
compound-word awareness, and verbal aptitude. (Inflectional awareness of both MA was
excluded from the analysis, due to the disqualification of latent variables that required at least
two tasks.) Both students' derivational awareness and compound-word awareness in Chinese (L1)
were hypothesized to be transferred to the corresponding awareness in English (L2), while verbal
aptitude was determined to control the development of such latent awareness in both languages.
Table 6 provides standardized parameter estimates for the direct, indirect, and total effects.
Verbal aptitude significantly predicted Chinese derivational and compound-word awareness
(B=.70; B=.66) and explained 49% and 44% of their variances, respectively. Both Chinese
derivational awareness and compound-word awareness, along with verbal aptitude, explained
28% and 45% of the variances of the corresponding awareness in English, respectively, while
verbal aptitude played an interesting role in the L1 to L2 transfer. Verbal aptitude made a
contribution to learners' development of English derivational awareness (B=.33, p<.01), but this
was not the case with English compound-word awareness (B=.13, p>.05) after controlling for the
corresponding awareness in Chinese. Verbal aptitude had an indirect effect (via Chinese
derivational awareness) on English derivational awareness (B=.17, p<.05), as was also the case
with Chinese compound-word awareness via English compound-word awareness (B=.38, p<.00).
The total effect of students’ verbal aptitude to the development of their derivational and
Page 19 of 41
compound-word awareness (B=.50, p<.00; B=.51, p<.00) were not less than the effects brought
by their corresponding linguistic awareness (B=.25, p<.05; B=.58, p<.00).
Discussion
Along with the expanding research into Chinese word formation, linguists and
researchers in recent years have begun analyzing Chinese words on the basis of their triarchic
morphological categorization. This study confirmed that Chinese speakers have MA constructs
similar to those of English speakers, composed of each speaker’s unique awareness of inflection,
derivation, and compound words. In terms of L2 acquisition, a linguistic distance between the
learner’s L1 and L2 is inevitable, but a sharing of metalinguistic awareness has been shown to
lessen these difficulties (Koda, 2008). This study proposed a cross-linguistic transfer model that
incorporates the linguistic and metalinguistic abilities with which second-language learners are
already equipped. Linguistic transfer was found to happen both within and across Chinese ESL
learners’ MA development in L1 and L2. Verbal aptitude, which in this study was primarily
inductive language learning ability (Carroll, 1965), was found to play a flexible role in
mediating the linguistic process mechanism. In fact, the idea of parallel linguistic awareness
transfer with verbal aptitude should not be limited to Chinese-to-English language acquisition.
The details of related findings are presented below.
Whether Chinese speakers develop inflectional or derivational awareness should not be a
matter of continued dispute. Chinese grammatical affixes are famous for being tenseless and
non-inflectional (Lin, 2003; 2006; Smith & Erbaugh, 2005). They can cue tenses, but they are
not the only means of doing so within sentences or a given context (e.g., 過 [guo4] (an
experiential suffix), Aaronson & Ferres, 1987; Wu, 2009). Lacking major features of
Page 20 of 41
inflectional awareness such as conjugation, inflectional awareness in Chinese can be quite
different from the standard inflectional awareness protocol (which refers to English or other
Indo-European languages). Some grammatical affixes are even multi-semantic, multi-functional,
and position free (e.g., 了 [le], a perfective suffix; Chang, 1992), but the findings of this study
suggest that Chinese inflectional awareness is a separate construct and distinctively different
from Chinese compound-word awareness. Additionally, Chinese speakers have been found to
develop specific knowledge that is different from compounding knowledge (Ku & Anderson,
2003; Zhang & Koda, 2014), though Chinese derivation is difficult to clearly differentiate from
Chinese compounding (Arcodia, 2012). This study confirms the findings and understands this
specific knowledge to be one that speakers use to encode appropriate POS to words, either with
word-forming affixes or other free morphemes that alter the POS or the status to the stem
morphemes. It should be noted that word derivation with free morphemes can be viewed as
compounding, but with additional POS or status alterations (e.g., 目 [mu] eye / 目睹 [mu4du3]
see; 滿意 [man3yi4] satisfied; satisfaction / 滿意度 [man3yi4du4] satisfaction). In summary,
Chinese speakers do develop knowledge of what affixes can be useful to encode information
regarding quantity and comparative forms (i.e., Chinese inflectional awareness) and attach right
morphemes that are encoded with appropriate POS (i.e., Chinese derivational awareness) apart
from their awareness of Chinese compound words.
The productivity of compounding in Chinese and derivations in English contributes to the
development of two other morphological affixations within these two languages. Chinese
compounding requires more knowledge than does POS identification, such as when one becomes
familiar with morpheme positions and word structures (Ceccagno & Basciano, 2007; Lin,
Anderson, Ku, Christianson, & Packard, 2011). Such knowledge overlaps with that which is
Page 21 of 41
required to form Chinese derivations, which explains why significant associations were found
between awareness of derivation and awareness of compounding in Chinese. On the other hand,
inflection and derivation in English are primarily rule-based. This is in contrast to the fact that
the decoding of English compound words requires a strategy of meaning inference.
Consequently, significant associations were found between awareness of inflection and
knowledge of derivation in English. In fact, high morphological productivity was expected to
emerge with an increase in applicability. Therefore, input-driven learning that is reinforced by
task frequency, availability, and reliability (Ellis, 2002; MacWhinney, 1997) is likely to help
language learners develop a stronger MA in that type of morphology. Direct instruction in
English inflectional and derivational rules useful to ESL and EFL learners is likely to increase
such learning effects.
Chinese speakers' MA and verbal aptitude developed from L1 were found to facilitate the
development of their L2. Koda (2008) points out that language learners usually begin to learn
their L2 language through automatically activating their prior literacy and metalinguistic
awareness developed from L1. In view of the notion that linguistic transfer usually travels from a
learner’s stronger language to the language being learned (Zhang, Anderson, Li, Dong, Yu,
Zhang, 2010; Zhang & Koda, 2014), more transfer was found, as expected, in their Chinese-to-
English awareness of compound words. The reason for this may be that compounding
morphology of both languages typically included transparent meanings and similar word
structures (Frisson, Nisander-Klement, & Pollatsek, 2008; Yuan & Huang, 1998; Zhang,
Anderson, Li, Dong, Wu, & Zhang, 2010). The lack of a direct effect from verbal aptitude was
suspected due to the variance being explained by their awareness of Chinese compound words.
This study does not suggest that Chinese ESL learners require no inductive reasoning abilities to
Page 22 of 41
develop the awareness necessary for learning a productive language system like that of Chinese
compound words; instead, it is probable that L1 verbal aptitude is heavily relied upon in the
construction of Chinese compounding and such L1 linguistic resources are further applied to the
English compound-word learning. With regards to the development of English derivational
awareness, this study found a direct contribution from verbal aptitude, but not from Chinese
derivational awareness. Less direct linguistic benefit probably forces Chinese ESL learners to
seek other resources – such as inductive reasoning – to facilitate their learning of English
derivational words. The lower productivity of Chinese derivations and fewer connections
between Chinese and English derivations might explain the lack of reliance on Chinese
derivational awareness. Therefore, verbal aptitude becomes even more important when linguistic
knowledge transfer is limited, since new patterns and rules for L2 need to be generated.
Limitations
It should be noted that there are certain limitations to this study. First, due the small
number of grammatical affixes in Chinese (approximately 10), only one test was designed and
used to measure the students' Chinese inflectional awareness. The lower reliability (α = .58) of
the task implies a large variance in Chinese speakers' scores. The limited quantity and lack of
universal rules for grammatical affixation could be major reasons for these results. However,
Chinese inflectional awareness is still considered within the Chinese MA model for the
following two reasons. Chinese speakers indeed use grammatical affixes to denote ideas such as
numbers and comparative forms. In addition, Chinese MA has been suggested to include an
inflectional-awareness path (see Table 5). Therefore, this study suggests that the complexity of
Chinese grammatical affixation deserves further exploration, especially as compared to the
mature findings regarding the structures of Chinese compound words and increasing knowledge
Page 23 of 41
of Chinese derivational words. Second, previous research has identified bidirectional transfers in
Chinese to English bilinguals' MA development (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2006; Zhang et al.,
2010). The focuses of this study are on the development of Chinese speakers' Chinese MA and
how their Chinese MA might facilitate the development of English MA. To investigate a
bidirectional transfer when MAs are conceptualized as three subsets of awareness, more
indicators or different must be included and appropriately constrained in order to identify the
model. Third, this study offers a comprehensive view of Chinese ESL learners' MA
development in Chinese and English through quantitative analyses. Qualitative analyses of how
students decode and compose both Chinese and English words could reveal their learning
progress in greater detail.
Conclusion
Odlin (1989) states that “transfer can occur in all linguistic subsystem[s]” (p. 23). It is
natural that language learners acquire language through input reception, feature notices, pattern
identification and restructuring, pattern manipulation, and creative uses (Dörnyei & Skehan,
2003). It may take less time for an L2 learner to communicate in L2 but a greater level of effort
to use it as a native speaker, since learning resources from L1 (i.e., linguistic knowledge,
language aptitude) can facilitate or impede L2 learning. Chinese learners possess the
competence to identify and use right morphemes both semantically and syntactically, which can
further be decomposed into parallel awareness subsets in Chinese and English. Inflectional
awareness and derivational awareness in Chinese could be renamed grammatical awareness and
word-forming awareness, if the distinctions between the two types of morphology in Chinese and
English are specified. Transfers in the direction of L1 (Chinese) to L2 (English) are confirmed,
but linguistic knowledge and verbal aptitude are interchangeably emphasized to help language
Page 24 of 41
learners deal with cross-linguistic mismatches or compensate for a less-productive L1
background. Maturely-developed MA does not refer to speakers' good knowledge of
morphology merely; instead, the inductive competence that allows speakers to seek patterns and
create formally and functionally appropriate words should not be neglected apart from MA.
This study reviews possible similarities and differences in word formation in Chinese and
English and explores Chinese ESL learners’ MA development. Chinese ESL learners may
encounter fewer difficulties when learning English compound words but are disadvantaged in
learning English derivational words, due to their L1 background. Since these disadvantages are
language-constrained and difficult to address in L1 acquisition, teachers should spend time
developing students' knowledge and inductive reasoning in ways that are specific to English
derivation. Since English inflectional and derivational affixes are syntactically and/or
semantically encoded, learning activities that engage learners in identifying morphemes within
English words and make combinational interpretation meaningfully coherent can be helpful,
especially when Chinese ESL learners have been adept in their Chinese character and word
decoding. Morphology is specific to each language, but the engagement of inductive reasoning
facilitates language learners in developing knowledge and further transforms such knowledge
and inductive reasoning process into morphological awareness.
Acknowledgment
This research is partially supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan under Grant
no. NSC 102-2511-S-003 -011 -MY2 and by the “Aim for the Top University Project” and “Center
of Learning Technology for Chinese” of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), sponsored by
the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C. and the “International Research-Intensive Center of
Excellence Program” of NTNU and Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. under
Grant no. MOST 104-2911-I-003-301.
Page 25 of 41
References
Aaronson, D. & Ferres, S. (1987). The impact of language differences on language processing:
An example from Chinese-English bilingualism. In P., Homel, M., Palij, & D. Aaronson
(eds.). Childhood bilingualism: Aspects of linguistic, cognitive, and social development.
Hillsdale, N. J.: Lea Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Adjemian, C. (1983). The transferability of lexical properties. In S. Gass, & L. Selinker (Eds.),
Language transfer in language learning (pp. 250-268). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Akamatsu, N. (2003). The effects of first language orthographic features on second language
reading in text. Language Learning, 53, 207-231.
Arcodia, G. F. (2011). A construction morphology account of derivation in Mandarin Chinese.
Morphology, 21(1), 89-130.
Arcodia, G. F. (2012). Lexical Derivation in Mandarin Chinese. Taipei: Crane.
Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150-177.
Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. Feldman
(Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189-209). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex
words: impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169-190.
Carroll, J. B. (1965). The prediction of success in intensive foreign language training. In R.
Glaser (ed.), Training, Research, and Education. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh
Press.
Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2002). An introduction to English morphology. Edinburgh, UK:
Edinburgh University Press.
Page 26 of 41
Morphology, 17
Chang, H. W. (1992). The acquisition of Chinese syntax. In H. C. Chen & O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.),
Language processing in Chinese (pp. 277-311). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Chen, X., Hao, M., Geva, E., Zhu, J., & Shu, H. (2009). The role of compound awareness in
Chinese children’s vocabulary acquisition and character reading. Reading and
Writing, 22(5), 615-631.
Clahsen, H., Felser, C., Neubauer, K., Sato, M., & Silva, R. (2010). Morphological structure in
native and nonnative language processing. Language Learning, 60(1), 21-43.
Dörnyei, Z. & Skehan, P. (2003). Individual differences in second language learning. In C. J.
Doughty and M. H. Long (eds.) The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford,
UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing. Studies in second language
acquisition, 24(02), 143-188.
Fabb, N. (1998). Compounding. In A. Spencer & A. M. Zwicky (Eds.), The handbook of
morphology (pp. 66-83). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Frisson, S., Niswander-Klement, E. & Pollatsek, A. (2008). The role of semantic transparency in
the processing of English compound words. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 87–107.
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (1992). Language transfer in language learning. Philadelphia: J.
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hamada, M., & Koda, K. (2008). Influence of first language orthographic experience on second
language decoding and word learning. Language Learning 58, 1-31.
Holm, A., & Dodd, B. (1996). The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English
literacy. Cognition, 59(2), 119-147.
Page 27 of 41
Huang, S. (1997). Chinese as a headless language in compounding morphology. In J. L. Packard
(Ed). New approaches to Chinese word formation: Morphology, phonology and the lexicon
in modern and ancient Chinese (pp. 261-284). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. (2005). Word List with Accumulated Word Frequency
in Sinica Corpus. Retrieved from http://elearning.ling.sinica.edu.tw/CWordfreq.html
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New
York: Routledge.
Jiang, N. (2004). Morphological insensitivity in second language processing. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 25, 603-634.
Kim, K. H. (2005). The relation among fit indexes, power, and sample size in structural equation
modeling. Structural Equation Modeling, 12(3), 368-390.
Koda, K. (2000). Cross-linguistic variations in L2 morphological awareness. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 21, 297-320.
Koda, K. (2008). Impacts of prior literacy experience on second-language learning to read. In K.
Koda, & A. Zehler (Eds). Learning to read across languages: Cross-linguistic relationships
in first-and second-language literacy development (pp. 68-96). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ku, Y.-M. (2001). Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and English. Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States - Illinois. Retrieved
April 8, 2009, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text database. (Publication No. AAT
3017133).
Ku, Y., & Anderson, R. C. (2003). Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and
English. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 399-422.
Kuo, L., & Anderson, R. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross
language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161-180.
Page 28 of 41
Lardiere, D. (1998). Case and tense in the “fossilized” steady state. Second Language Research,
14, 1-26.
Li, C. N., & Thompson, S. A. (2003). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar.
Taiwan: The Crane Publishing Co. Ltd.
Libben, G. (1998). Semantic transparency in the processing of compounds: Consequences for
representation, processing, and impairment. Brain and Language, 61(1), 30-44.
Lin, J.-W. (2003). Temporal reference in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistic, 12,
259-311.
Lin, J.-W. (2006). Time in a language without tense: The case of Chinese. Journal of Semantics,
23, 1-53.
Lin, T.-J., Anderson, R. C., Ku, Y.-M., Christianson, K., & Packard, J. (2011). Chinese
children’s concept of word. Writing Systems Research, 3 , 41–57.
Liao, W.-W. (2014). Morphology. In C.T. Huang, Y.-H., Li, & A. Simpson. (2014). The
handbook of Chinese linguistics. (pp. 3-25). Hoboken, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Liu, P. D., & McBride-Chang, C. (2010). What is morphological awareness? Tapping lexical
compounding awareness in Chinese third graders. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 102(1), 62.
Long, D. L. (1997). Individual differences in readers’ sentence- and text-level representations.
Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 129-145.
Lu, J.-Y., Wu, W.-D., & Chien, M.-C. (2001). The junior high school students’ scholastic
aptitude test. Taipei, Taiwan: Psychological Publishing Co. Ltd.
Ma, J. H. (1985). A study of the Mandarin Chinese verb suffix zhe. Taipei, Taiwan: Crane
Publishing Company.
Page 29 of 41
MacCallum, R. C., Browne, M. W., & Sugawara, H. M. (1996). Power analysis and
determination of sample size for covariance structure modeling. Psychological
methods, 1(2), 130.
MacWhinney, B. (1997). Second language acquisition and the competition model. Tutorials in
bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 113-142.
Mahony, D., Singson, M., & Mann, V. (2000). Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological
relations. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 191-218.
Marcus, G., Pinker, S., Ullman, M., Hollander, M., Rosen, T.J., & Xu, F. (1992).
Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in
Child Development, 57. 1-182.
McBride-Chang, C., Cheung, H., Chow, B. W.-Y. Chow, C. S.-L., & Choi, L. (2006).
Metalinguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). Reading
and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, 695-716.
McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.-R., Liu, H., Wagner, R. K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., Muse, A. (2005).
Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological awareness and
morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders
from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 92, 140-160.
McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., Zhou, A., Wat, C. P., & Wagner, R. K. (2003). Morphological
awareness uniquely predicts young children’s Chinese character recognition. Journal of
Educational Psychology 95, 743-751.
Ministry of Education (1994). Chinese Lexicon Dictionary – the Revised Edition. Retrieved from
http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/
Page 30 of 41
Myers, J., Huang, Y. C., & Wang, W. (2006). Frequency effects in the processing of Chinese
inflection. Journal of Memory and Language, 54(3), 300-323.
Ng, H. T., & Low, J. K. (2004, July). Chinese part-of-speech tagging: One-at-a-time or all-at-
once? word-based or character-based?. In EMNLP (pp. 277-284).
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997a). Learning to spell regular and irregular verbs.
In Spelling (pp. 113-135). Springer Netherlands.
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997b). Morphological spelling strategies: developmental
stages and processes. Developmental psychology, 33(4), 637.
Nicoladis, E. (2002). What’s the difference between “toilet paper” and “paper toilet”?
French-English bilingual children’s crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns. Journal
of Child Language, 29, 843-863.
Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Packard, J. (2000). The morphology of Chinese: A linguistics and cognitive approach. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Plag, I. (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pasquarella, A., Chen, X., Lam, K., Luo, Y. C., & Ramirez, G. (2011). Cross‐language transfer
of morphological awareness in Chinese–English bilinguals. Journal of Research in
Reading, 34, 23-42.
Skehan, P. (1986). Cluster analysis and the identification of learner types. In V. Cook (ed.),
Experimental Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (pp. 81-94). Oxford: Pergamon
Press.
Page 31 of 41
Skehan, P. (1991). Individual differences in second language learning. Studies in second
language acquisition, 13(02), 275-298.
Smith, C., & Erbaugh, M. (2005). Temporal interpretation in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics, 43,
713-756.
Sparks, R. L., Humbach, N., Patton, J. O. N., & Ganschow, L. (2011). Subcomponents of
second‐language aptitude and second‐language proficiency. The Modern Language
Journal, 95(2), 253-273.
Sparks, R. L., Patton, J. O. N., Ganschow, L., & Humbach, N. (2009). Long-term relationships
among early first language skills, second language aptitude, second language affect, and
later second language proficiency. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30(04), 725-755.
Stump, G. T. (2005). Word-formation and Inflectional Morphology, in P. Štekauer & R. Lieber
(eds.), Handbook of word formation (pp.48-71). Dordrecht, The Netherrlands: Springer.
Tang, T. (1988). Han yu ci fa ju fa lun ji [Studies on Chinese Morphology and Syntax]: Xian dai
yu yan xue lun cong 12. Taipei: Taiwan xue sheng shu dian.
Wang, M., Koda, K., & Perfetti, C. (2003). Alphabetic and nonalphabetic L1 effects in English
word identification: A comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners. Cognition
87, 129-149.
Wu, J.-S. (2009). Tense as a discourse feature: Rethinking temporal location in Mandarin
Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguist, 18, 145-165.
Yuan, C.F. & Huang, C.N. (1998). 基於語素數據庫的漢語語素及構辭研究 [Chinese
morphemes and compounds: A corpus study]. Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, 3,
7–12.
Page 32 of 41
Zhang, D. (2013). Linguistic distance effect on cross-linguistic transfer of morphological
awareness. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34, 917-942.
Zhang, J., Anderson, R., Li, H., Dong, Q., Wu, X., & Zhang, Y. (2010). Cross-language transfer
of insight into the structure of compound words. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary
Journal, 23, 311-336.
Zhang, J., Anderson, R. C., Packard, J., Wu, X., & Tang, S. (2007). Development of knowledge
about compound word structures in Chinese and English. Champaign, IL: Center for the
Study of Reading.
Zhang, J., Anderson, R. C., Wang, Q., Packard, J., Wu, X., Tang, S., et al. (2012). Insight into
the structure of compound words among speakers of Chinese and English. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 33, 753–779.
Zhang, D., & Koda, K. (2013). Morphological awareness and reading comprehension in a
foreign language: A study of young Chinese EFL learners. System, 41(4), 901-913.
Zhang, D., & Koda, K. (2014). Awareness of derivation and compounding in Chinese–English
biliteracy acquisition. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17(1),
55-73.
Zhang, J., Lin, T.-J., Wei, J., & Anderson, R. C. (2014). Morphological awareness and learning
to read Chinese and English. In X. Chen, Q. Wang, & Y. C. Luo, (eds.), Reading
development and difficulties in monolingual and bilingual Chinese children, Literacy
Studies 8. New York: Springer.
Page 33 of 41
Figure 1. Conceptual model of Chinese – English MA transfer model
Figure 2. Path Analyses of Chinese Compound-Word Awareness and English Derivational Awareness to
Other Types of MA within Chinese MA and English MA
Figure 3. Structural model of Chinese – English MA transfer model
Table 1
The list of grammatical and word-forming affixes in Chinese
Grammatical Affixes Word-forming Affixes

- plural suffixes: 們 [-men] (a human plural noun - nominalizing suffixes (性 [xing4] and 度 [du4])
suffix)
- the verbalizing suffix (化 [hua])
- resultative potential infixes: 得 [-de] (a
resultative infix to verbs) and 不 [-bu4] (a - the negative prefixes (無 [wu2], 未 [wei4] 非
negative resultative infix to verbs) [fei])
- aspect markers: 過 [guo4] (an experiential - the adverbial suffix (然 [ran2]), the agentive
suffix), 了 [le] (a perfective suffix), 著 [zhe] (a suffix (者 [zhe3])
durative suffix), 起來 [qi3 lai2] (an inchoative
suffix), 在 [zai4] (a progressive suffix)
(Li & Thompson, 2003; Packard, 2000)
Page 34 of 41
Table 2
The Number of Test Items, the Test Reliabilities and the Means (SDs) by Grade Levels on Morphological Awareness Measures
Measures Item Alpha 7th Graders 8th Graders 9th Graders
Chinese (Ch.)
Inflectional Awareness 10 .58 8.23 (1.67) 8.34 (1.53) 8.74 (1.27)
Derivational Awareness* .82
Word-forming Affixes 14 .76 6.20 (2.65) 7.98 (3.03) 8.74 (1.27)
High-frequency Morphemes 11 .61 5.66 (1.88) 6.53 (2.27) 6.82 (2.23)
Awareness of Compounds
Morpheme Combination 26 .84 16.94 (4.88) 17.91 (5.01) 19.72 (3.64)
Morpheme Compounding 26 .82 12.42 (4.27) 14.62 (5.93) 14.66 (4.17)
English (En.)
Inflectional Awareness 14 .86 6.32 (3.17) 8.27 (3.77) 9.38 (3.86)
Derivational Awareness
Derivation 15 .77 7.33 (4.58) 8.39 (5.65) 10.25 (5.01)
Decomposition 15 .85 7.72 (3.45) 8.65 (3.58) 9.97 (3.75)
Awareness of Compounds
Morpheme Identification 20 .73 14.85 (2.82) 14.64 (3.50) 16.37 (2.92)
Compound Decoding 40 .90 16.11 (7.70) 19.95 (9.90) 20.28 (7.54)
* means that the sub-tasks in the category were placed in one inclusive task when the measurements were administered.
Page 35 of 41
Table 3
Correlations between Verbal Aptitude, Chinese Morphological Awareness, and English Morphological Awareness Measures
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1. VA: Induction -
2. VA: Analogy .59* -
3. ChInfl. .41* .33* -
4. ChDeri: Word-forming Affix .52* .44* .51* -
5. ChDeri: High-freq. Morpheme .49* .39* .46* .71* -
6. ChComp: Morpheme Combination .45* .37* .42* .59* .55* -
7. ChComp:Morpheme Compounding .42* .38* .54* .67* .67* .57* -
8. EnInfl. .37* .24* .28* .37* .37* .34* .37* -
9. EnDeri: Derivation .43* .24* .30* .38* .39* .29* .32* .71* -
10. EnDeri: Decoding .35* .24* .27* .27* .33* .28* .32* .72* .72* -
11. EnComp: Morpheme .36* .24* .30* .35* .39* .34* .35* .59* .54* .53* -
Identification
12. EnCom: Compound Decoding .33* .20* .34* .42* .45* .35* .45* .59* .52* .58* .54* -
Mean 18.23 17.67 8.43 7.40 6.32 18.15 13.88 8.67 8.62 8.75 15.26 18.73
SD 4.16 3.35 1.52 2.95 2.18 4.70 4.96 4.33 5.22 3.69 3.17 8.64
Page 36 of 41
*a=.01
VA=Verbal Aptitude
Page 37 of 41
Table 4.
Parameter Estimates of the Measurement Model for CFA of Chinese MA and English MA
Paths B z R2
ChInfl.  ChMA .61*** 10.86 .37
ChDeri: Word-forming Affix  ChMA .84*** 16.84 .71
ChDeri: High-freq. Morpheme  ChMA .82*** 16.22 .67
ChComp: Morpheme Combination  ChMA .69*** 12.72 .48
ChComp: Morpheme Compounding  ChMA .81*** 16.06 .66
EnInfl  EnMA .87*** 17.63 .76
EnDeri: Derivation  EnMA .79*** 15.07 .62
EnDeri: Decoding  EnMA .81*** 15.64 .65
EnComp: Morpheme Identification  EnMA .70*** 12.86 .48
EnCom: Compound Decoding  EnMA .71*** 13.19 .50
ChMA  EnMA .56*** 11.66 -
***p<.001
Page 38 of 41
Page 39 of 41
Table 5
Model Comparison for the Composition of Chinese MA Construct
2
χ df p RMSEA CFI SRMR
Free Parameter Model 57.51 33 <.00 .05 .99 .04
Fixed Parameter Model
Inflectional Awareness 155.17 34 <.00 .11 .95 .16

(ChMAChInfl)
Derivational Awareness 507.21 35 <.00 .22 .83 .27
(ChMA ChDeri)
Inflectional and Derivational Awareness 730.54 36 <.00 .26 .79 .30
(ChMA ChInfl, ChDeri)
Differences (free vs. fixed)
Inflectional Awareness 97.66 1 .00
Derivational Awareness 449.70 2 .00
Inflectional and Derivational Awareness 673.03 3 .00
Page 40 of 41
Table 6
Parameter Estimates of Chinese Derivational and Compound-Word Awareness and Verbal Aptitude on
the Development of Derivational and Compound-Word Awareness
Predicto Direct effect Indirect effect Total effect

rs
Unstandardi Standa R2 Unstandardi Standa Unstandardi Standa
zed rd zed rd zed rd
Coefficients Errors Coefficients Errors Coefficients Errors
ChDeri .4
9
 VA .70*** .07 - - .70*** .07
ChCo .4
mp 4
 VA .66*** .08 - - .66*** .08
EnDeri .2
8
 VA .33** .10 .17* .07 .50*** .07
 .25* .11 .25* .10
ChDeri
EnCo .4
mp 5
 VA .13 .11 .38*** .38 .51*** .08
 .58*** .11 - - .58*** .11
ChComp
* p<.05. ** p<.01. ***p<.001.
Page 41 of 41

The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Accepted Manuscript

Title: The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Author: Yi-Fen Yeh, R.M. Joshi, Xuejun Ryan Ji

To appear in: Contemporary Educational Psychology

The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Yi-Fen Yeh (corresponding author)

National Taiwan Normal University

Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University

1. Chinese MA includes inflectional, derivational, and compound-word awareness.

2. Higher levels of Chinese MA are associated with higher levels of English MA

3. Students’ compounding awareness is used to process words with word-forming affixes.

4. Associations are found between awareness of inflection and derivation in English.

5. Linguistic knowledge and verbal aptitude are interchangeably used in MA development.

compound words) to a construction of Chinese morphological awareness. The students’

awareness of Chinese inflection and derivation is partially explained by their awareness of

be as important as Chinese MA to the development of English MA, since it supports learners

that share many connections (such as English compounding).

Keywords: Chinese morphological awareness, English morphological awareness, cross language

transfer, inflection, derivation, Mandarin

The Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese ESL Students

Morphological awareness (MA) refers to the sensitivity or knowledge that speakers

these morphological categories can be considered representative of Chinese morphology, and

If Chinese MA can be conceptualized as a construct composed of three types of

enhanced by their Chinese background. Language learners' acquisition of a second language

these two languages.

Word Formation in English

redcap, lazybones, greenhouse; Carstairs-McCarthey, 2002; Fabb, 1998; Nicoladis, 2002).

Word Formation in Chinese

[INSERT TABLE 1 HERE]

languages. Arcodia (2011, 2012) attempted to differentiate derivational affixation from

affixes," or as a "versatile constituent of compounding" (Arcodia, 2012, p. 99). Though

experiences with these limited-in-number but functionally similar affixes in Chinese.

Cross-Linguistic Morphological Awareness

Chinese-English bilinguals or Chinese ESL students experience the phenomenon of

be able to accurately detect semantic inconsistencies in morphologically complex English words

L2 aptitude that includes a componential construct in addition to L1 skills, and confirmed it as a

from the process of L1 acquisition to develop their L2 MA.

awareness of the three morphological affixations in Chinese, especially when such

morphological categorization is explicit in Indo-European languages but often implicit in

Chinese. The productivity of compounding in Chinese and derivation in English probably

explores a cross-linguistic transferring model composed of parallel MA constructs between

[Insert Figure 1 about here]

in the construction of the Chinese and English MA tests in this study.

internal consistency reliability was .58.

derivational awareness. Both required students to demonstrate their level of derivational

morphemes (11 items). Word-forming affixes included nominalizing suffixes, a verbalizing

of these two tasks were .76 and .61, respectively.

Chinese compound-word awareness tasks. Participants were required to read a sentence

and .82 respectively.

to be acquired, for junior high school graduates.

these two tasks were .77 and .85 respectively.

English compound-word awareness tasks. English Morpheme Identification Task

subtests of verbal ability, which contains 50 multiple-choice questions, to evaluate students’

two sections is reported as .86 and .91.

Item Validity and Scoring

designed to measure participants' knowledge of an inchoative suffix (i.e., 起來 [qi3lai2]). It is a

performance of the target’s awareness.

administered (40 minutes).

[Insert Table 2 about here]

[Insert Table 3 about here]

Measurement Models for Chinese and English MAs

[Insert Table 4 about here]

inflectional or derivational awareness were necessary components of Chinese morphological