Boping Yuan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3843009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Boping Yuan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Boping |
| FAMILY NAME | Yuan |
| SIGNATURE | YUAN B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2920-079X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Is translanguaging rule-governed
Disentangling cues of different domains in transfer and development in L3 acquisition: An investigation of L2/L3 Mandarin yes-no questions
This empirical study aims to shed light on L3 initial-stage transfer and later development by investigating Q-operations in L1 English–L2 Cantonese and L1 Cantonese–L2 English bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin and L1 English speakers’ L2 Mandarin at low and high proficiency levels. Data from an online cross-modal priming task and an offline acceptability judgement task found that structural similarity determines transfer source selection. Adopting a de-com…
What looks native-like may not necessarily be native-like: Evidence from L2 Chinese covert objects
A substantial body of research has investigated null arguments in L2 Chinese, showing that they can be native-like. However, recent linguistic research has demonstrated convincingly that some ‘missing’ arguments in Chinese should be viewed not as ‘null’ arguments but as a result of movement and ellipsis. These advances necessitate a revaluation of the issue of ‘null’ arguments in previous L2 studies which largely overlooked the role of ellipsis i…
How does a structurally similar background language influence L3 grammars? A study on the syntax of L2/L3 Mandarin [SI 21/3]
This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were Mandarin native speakers, L1 English-L2 Mandarin speakers, L1 English-L2 Cantonese-L3 Mandarin speakers,…
English and Spanish speakers’ interpretations of L2 Chinese applicative double object constructions
This article reports an empirical study investigating whether English and Spanish speakers can reconstruct thematic structures in their second language (L2) grammars of Chinese Double Object Constructions. Data collected from an acceptability judgement task and an animation matching task suggest that learners are able to reconstruct L2 grammars to accommodate new target properties. However, it is also found that learners have difficulty removing …
Asymmetric transfer and development of temporal-aspectual sentence-final particles in English-Cantonese bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin grammars
Aiming to shed new light on the discussion on transfer at initial stages of third language (L 3 ) acquisition and development at later stages, this article reports on an empirical study of L 3 acquisition of Mandarin temporal-aspectual sentence-final particles (SFPs) le, ne and láizhe by English speaking and English-Cantonese bilingual learners, at both low and high proficiency levels. Cantonese is typologically and structurally closer to Mandari…
Dependency resolutions of null and overt subjects in English speakers’ L2 Chinese: Evidence for the cue-based model
This study investigates whether there are different first-language–second-language (L1–L2) dependency resolutions by focusing on less-studied crosslinguistic variances in L2 acquisition of Chinese, a null-subject language, by speakers of English, a non-null-subject language. The overt subject pronoun of a Chinese main clause has free orientation and its antecedent can be the subject or object of the preceding causal subordinate clause, depending …
An incremental model of second language speech production mechanisms: Developmental evidence from object ellipsis in second language Chinese speech production
Aims: This study investigates object ellipsis in English and Korean speakers’ second language (L2) Chinese speech production and the effects of first language (L1) influence in L2 Chinese speech production. Design: 59 English speakers and 64 Korean speakers at various Chinese proficiency levels, as well as 16 native speakers of Chinese, participated in the study. In addition to an acceptability judgement test, an utterance-recall task was employe…
Can L2 sentence processing strategies be native-like? Evidence from English speakers' L2 processing of Chinese base-generated-topic sentences
The effect of computational complexity on L1 transfer: Evidence from L2 Chinese attitude-bearing wh-questions
Wh-on-earth’ in Chinese speakers’ L2 English: Evidence of dormant features
Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers’ second language (L2) acquisition of English wh-on-earth questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or who on earth). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion task and an interpretation task were used in the study, and the results indicate that in Chinese speakers’ L2 English, the form…
Is Chinese ‘ daodi ’ ‘ the hell ’ in English speakers’ L2 acquisition of Chinese daodi … wh … questions? Effects and recoverability of L1 transfer at L2 interfaces
This article presents a study investigating the effects and recoverability of L1 transfer at L2 syntax–semantics and syntax–discourse interfaces in English speakers’ L2 acquisition of Chinese daodi ... wh-questions, which are considered approximate counterparts of wh-the-hell questions in English. English speakers are found to be able to acquire syntactic properties of daodi ... wh-questions, but the syntactic structure of the question in their L…
Asymmetric syntactic and thematic reconfigurations in English speakers’ L2 Chinese resultative compound constructions
This article reports on an empirical study investigating whether English speakers are able to reconstruct resultative compound structures in their second language (L2) grammars of Chinese. Results of an acceptability judgment test suggest that there are asymmetric developments in the syntactic and thematic structures of learners’ L2 Chinese resultative compounds. Syntactically, learners at intermediate and advanced stages behave native-like by al…
Is the core-peripheral distinction for unaccusative verbs cross-linguistically consistent?: Empirical evidence from Mandarin
This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into the characteristics of unaccusativity in Mandarin by building on the gradient approach to split intransitivity (Sorace, 2000) and previous analyses of Mandarin within that framework (Liu, 2007). The study explores the acceptability of unaccusative verbs in the verb-subject construction with respect to their core-peripheral features. The results clearly demonstrate support for the …
Domain-wide or variable-dependent vulnerability of the semantics—syntax interface in L2 acquisition? Evidence from wh-words used as existential polarity words in L2 Chinese grammars
Most studies in the second language (L2) literature that deal with interface issues do so in holistic terms. On the one hand, researchers have suggested that interface relations between the syntax and other domains are particularly difficult for adult L2 learners. On the other, it has been argued that such relations can be established in a native-like way, even when no clear positive evidence is readily available in the input. In both cases resea…
Japanese speakers' second language Chinese wh-questions: A lexical morphological feature deficit account
In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese wh-questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered wh-in-situ languages in which a wh-word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question particles to mark questions. It is assumed that C 0 in wh-questions is essentially ambiguous and unvalue…
The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: Against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition
This article reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Both French and German are languages which allow thematic verbs to raise. In contrast, thematic verbs in English and Chinese must remain in situ under V at PF. It has been widely reported in the second-language and nonnative language (L2) literature that (option…
Acquiring the unaccusative unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese
It has been proposed that intransitive verbs can be divided into two subgroups, unaccusative verbs, such as “break” and “arrive,” and unergative verbs, such as “laugh” and “swim”; the former type has an internal but no external argument, whereas the latter type has an external but no internal argument. Unaccusative verbs are verbs of change of state or location, while unergative verbs are a set of agentive monadic verbs of manner of motion. Engli…
Interpretation of binding and orientation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers
This article reports on an empirical study of the interpretation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers. In English, reflexives can only take a local (LOC) antecedent, whereas the Chinese reflexive ziji and the Japanese reflexive zibun can have a long-distance (LD) antecedent as well as a local one. Another property of the long-distance reflexives is subject orientation. However, reflexives in English allow both subject NP…
Acquisition of Base-Generated Topics by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese
This study investigated the acquisition of base-generated topics in Mandarin Chinese by 102 British university students learning Chinese as a second language. Chinese differs from English in that in Chinese the topic can be base-generated, whereas in English it has to go through the process of movement. The hypothesis was that it would not be difficult for English speakers to acquire the base-generated topic in Chinese because in the acquisition …
Second Language Acquisition of Reflexives Revisited
Quite a few researchers have used data on the acquisition of English reflexives by native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as evidence for the claim that Universal Grammar (UG) is available to L2 learners and parameter resetting is possible in second language acquisition (SLA; cf. Finer & Broselow 1986, Finer 1990, 1991, Hirakawa 1990, Thomas 1989, 1991). In this discussion note, I will show that the acquisition of English reflexives by …
Wh-on-earth’ in Chinese speakers’ L2 English: Evidence of dormant features
Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers’ second language (L2) acquisition of English wh-on-earth questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or who on earth). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion task and an interpretation task were used in the study, and the results indicate that in Chinese speakers’ L2 English, the form…
Domain-wide or variable-dependent vulnerability of the semantics—syntax interface in L2 acquisition? Evidence from wh-words used as existential polarity words in L2 Chinese grammars
Most studies in the second language (L2) literature that deal with interface issues do so in holistic terms. On the one hand, researchers have suggested that interface relations between the syntax and other domains are particularly difficult for adult L2 learners. On the other, it has been argued that such relations can be established in a native-like way, even when no clear positive evidence is readily available in the input. In both cases resea…
Japanese speakers' second language Chinese wh-questions: A lexical morphological feature deficit account
In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese wh-questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered wh-in-situ languages in which a wh-word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question particles to mark questions. It is assumed that C 0 in wh-questions is essentially ambiguous and unvalue…
The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: Against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition
This article reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Both French and German are languages which allow thematic verbs to raise. In contrast, thematic verbs in English and Chinese must remain in situ under V at PF. It has been widely reported in the second-language and nonnative language (L2) literature that (option…
Acquisition of Base-Generated Topics by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese
This study investigated the acquisition of base-generated topics in Mandarin Chinese by 102 British university students learning Chinese as a second language. Chinese differs from English in that in Chinese the topic can be base-generated, whereas in English it has to go through the process of movement. The hypothesis was that it would not be difficult for English speakers to acquire the base-generated topic in Chinese because in the acquisition …
Dependency resolutions of null and overt subjects in English speakers’ L2 Chinese: Evidence for the cue-based model
This study investigates whether there are different first-language–second-language (L1–L2) dependency resolutions by focusing on less-studied crosslinguistic variances in L2 acquisition of Chinese, a null-subject language, by speakers of English, a non-null-subject language. The overt subject pronoun of a Chinese main clause has free orientation and its antecedent can be the subject or object of the preceding causal subordinate clause, depending …
Can L2 sentence processing strategies be native-like? Evidence from English speakers' L2 processing of Chinese base-generated-topic sentences
The effect of computational complexity on L1 transfer: Evidence from L2 Chinese attitude-bearing wh-questions
Acquiring the unaccusative unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese
It has been proposed that intransitive verbs can be divided into two subgroups, unaccusative verbs, such as “break” and “arrive,” and unergative verbs, such as “laugh” and “swim”; the former type has an internal but no external argument, whereas the latter type has an external but no internal argument. Unaccusative verbs are verbs of change of state or location, while unergative verbs are a set of agentive monadic verbs of manner of motion. Engli…
Second Language Acquisition of Reflexives Revisited
Quite a few researchers have used data on the acquisition of English reflexives by native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as evidence for the claim that Universal Grammar (UG) is available to L2 learners and parameter resetting is possible in second language acquisition (SLA; cf. Finer & Broselow 1986, Finer 1990, 1991, Hirakawa 1990, Thomas 1989, 1991). In this discussion note, I will show that the acquisition of English reflexives by …
How does a structurally similar background language influence L3 grammars? A study on the syntax of L2/L3 Mandarin [SI 21/3]
This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were Mandarin native speakers, L1 English-L2 Mandarin speakers, L1 English-L2 Cantonese-L3 Mandarin speakers,…
Second Language Acquisition of Reflexives Revisited
Quite a few researchers have used data on the acquisition of English reflexives by native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as evidence for the claim that Universal Grammar (UG) is available to L2 learners and parameter resetting is possible in second language acquisition (SLA; cf. Finer & Broselow 1986, Finer 1990, 1991, Hirakawa 1990, Thomas 1989, 1991). In this discussion note, I will show that the acquisition of English reflexives by …
Acquisition of Base-Generated Topics by English-Speaking Learners of Chinese
This study investigated the acquisition of base-generated topics in Mandarin Chinese by 102 British university students learning Chinese as a second language. Chinese differs from English in that in Chinese the topic can be base-generated, whereas in English it has to go through the process of movement. The hypothesis was that it would not be difficult for English speakers to acquire the base-generated topic in Chinese because in the acquisition …
Interpretation of binding and orientation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers
This article reports on an empirical study of the interpretation of the Chinese reflexive ziji by English and Japanese speakers. In English, reflexives can only take a local (LOC) antecedent, whereas the Chinese reflexive ziji and the Japanese reflexive zibun can have a long-distance (LD) antecedent as well as a local one. Another property of the long-distance reflexives is subject orientation. However, reflexives in English allow both subject NP…
Acquiring the unaccusative unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese
It has been proposed that intransitive verbs can be divided into two subgroups, unaccusative verbs, such as “break” and “arrive,” and unergative verbs, such as “laugh” and “swim”; the former type has an internal but no external argument, whereas the latter type has an external but no internal argument. Unaccusative verbs are verbs of change of state or location, while unergative verbs are a set of agentive monadic verbs of manner of motion. Engli…
The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: Against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition
This article reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Both French and German are languages which allow thematic verbs to raise. In contrast, thematic verbs in English and Chinese must remain in situ under V at PF. It has been widely reported in the second-language and nonnative language (L2) literature that (option…
Japanese speakers' second language Chinese wh-questions: A lexical morphological feature deficit account
In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese wh-questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered wh-in-situ languages in which a wh-word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question particles to mark questions. It is assumed that C 0 in wh-questions is essentially ambiguous and unvalue…
Is the core-peripheral distinction for unaccusative verbs cross-linguistically consistent?: Empirical evidence from Mandarin
This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into the characteristics of unaccusativity in Mandarin by building on the gradient approach to split intransitivity (Sorace, 2000) and previous analyses of Mandarin within that framework (Liu, 2007). The study explores the acceptability of unaccusative verbs in the verb-subject construction with respect to their core-peripheral features. The results clearly demonstrate support for the …
Domain-wide or variable-dependent vulnerability of the semantics—syntax interface in L2 acquisition? Evidence from wh-words used as existential polarity words in L2 Chinese grammars
Most studies in the second language (L2) literature that deal with interface issues do so in holistic terms. On the one hand, researchers have suggested that interface relations between the syntax and other domains are particularly difficult for adult L2 learners. On the other, it has been argued that such relations can be established in a native-like way, even when no clear positive evidence is readily available in the input. In both cases resea…
Asymmetric syntactic and thematic reconfigurations in English speakers’ L2 Chinese resultative compound constructions
This article reports on an empirical study investigating whether English speakers are able to reconstruct resultative compound structures in their second language (L2) grammars of Chinese. Results of an acceptability judgment test suggest that there are asymmetric developments in the syntactic and thematic structures of learners’ L2 Chinese resultative compounds. Syntactically, learners at intermediate and advanced stages behave native-like by al…
Is Chinese ‘ daodi ’ ‘ the hell ’ in English speakers’ L2 acquisition of Chinese daodi … wh … questions? Effects and recoverability of L1 transfer at L2 interfaces
This article presents a study investigating the effects and recoverability of L1 transfer at L2 syntax–semantics and syntax–discourse interfaces in English speakers’ L2 acquisition of Chinese daodi ... wh-questions, which are considered approximate counterparts of wh-the-hell questions in English. English speakers are found to be able to acquire syntactic properties of daodi ... wh-questions, but the syntactic structure of the question in their L…
Wh-on-earth’ in Chinese speakers’ L2 English: Evidence of dormant features
Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers’ second language (L2) acquisition of English wh-on-earth questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or who on earth). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion task and an interpretation task were used in the study, and the results indicate that in Chinese speakers’ L2 English, the form…
The effect of computational complexity on L1 transfer: Evidence from L2 Chinese attitude-bearing wh-questions
Can L2 sentence processing strategies be native-like? Evidence from English speakers' L2 processing of Chinese base-generated-topic sentences
An incremental model of second language speech production mechanisms: Developmental evidence from object ellipsis in second language Chinese speech production
Aims: This study investigates object ellipsis in English and Korean speakers’ second language (L2) Chinese speech production and the effects of first language (L1) influence in L2 Chinese speech production. Design: 59 English speakers and 64 Korean speakers at various Chinese proficiency levels, as well as 16 native speakers of Chinese, participated in the study. In addition to an acceptability judgement test, an utterance-recall task was employe…
Dependency resolutions of null and overt subjects in English speakers’ L2 Chinese: Evidence for the cue-based model
This study investigates whether there are different first-language–second-language (L1–L2) dependency resolutions by focusing on less-studied crosslinguistic variances in L2 acquisition of Chinese, a null-subject language, by speakers of English, a non-null-subject language. The overt subject pronoun of a Chinese main clause has free orientation and its antecedent can be the subject or object of the preceding causal subordinate clause, depending …
English and Spanish speakers’ interpretations of L2 Chinese applicative double object constructions
This article reports an empirical study investigating whether English and Spanish speakers can reconstruct thematic structures in their second language (L2) grammars of Chinese Double Object Constructions. Data collected from an acceptability judgement task and an animation matching task suggest that learners are able to reconstruct L2 grammars to accommodate new target properties. However, it is also found that learners have difficulty removing …
Asymmetric transfer and development of temporal-aspectual sentence-final particles in English-Cantonese bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin grammars
Aiming to shed new light on the discussion on transfer at initial stages of third language (L 3 ) acquisition and development at later stages, this article reports on an empirical study of L 3 acquisition of Mandarin temporal-aspectual sentence-final particles (SFPs) le, ne and láizhe by English speaking and English-Cantonese bilingual learners, at both low and high proficiency levels. Cantonese is typologically and structurally closer to Mandari…
Disentangling cues of different domains in transfer and development in L3 acquisition: An investigation of L2/L3 Mandarin yes-no questions
This empirical study aims to shed light on L3 initial-stage transfer and later development by investigating Q-operations in L1 English–L2 Cantonese and L1 Cantonese–L2 English bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin and L1 English speakers’ L2 Mandarin at low and high proficiency levels. Data from an online cross-modal priming task and an offline acceptability judgement task found that structural similarity determines transfer source selection. Adopting a de-com…
What looks native-like may not necessarily be native-like: Evidence from L2 Chinese covert objects
A substantial body of research has investigated null arguments in L2 Chinese, showing that they can be native-like. However, recent linguistic research has demonstrated convincingly that some ‘missing’ arguments in Chinese should be viewed not as ‘null’ arguments but as a result of movement and ellipsis. These advances necessitate a revaluation of the issue of ‘null’ arguments in previous L2 studies which largely overlooked the role of ellipsis i…
How does a structurally similar background language influence L3 grammars? A study on the syntax of L2/L3 Mandarin [SI 21/3]
This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were Mandarin native speakers, L1 English-L2 Mandarin speakers, L1 English-L2 Cantonese-L3 Mandarin speakers,…
Is translanguaging rule-governed
Linguistics (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (12 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (10 works) · Natural language processing (7 works) · Second-language acquisition (7 works) · First language (6 works) · Mathematics (6 works)