| Author: | Lui, Fong Belinda |
| Title: | An investigation of Cantonese L2 learners' linguistic knowledge with regard to identifying and producing english compound nouns |
| Degree: | M.A. |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Subject: | English language -- Noun phrase English language -- Study and teaching -- China -- Hong Kong Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English |
| Pages: | v, 94 leaves ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Compounding is a major word-formation process in English, but it is considered a difficult area for second language learners of English. The present study attempted to investigate Cantonese L2 learners' linguistic knowledge with focus on their ability to define, identify and produce English nominal compounds. Three experimental tasks namely Discrimination Exercise, Identification Task and Exercise on Making Compounds and a Questionnaire were designed, and two groups of tertiary students, comprising language students and non-language students, participated in the study. The results of the study indicate that students' knowledge of English nominal compounds was on the whole rather limited though language students seemed to be able to perform better than the non-language students in the tasks. Only established lexicalised nominal compounds tended to be easily identified and produced by the students. Most students had confused nominal compounds with noun phrases of the same syntactic construction and derived words, and they did not seem to have acquired a systematic set of criteria or rules for identifying compounds. Students' feedback in the Questionnaire also confirms that they did not have a precise idea of English nominal compounds, and their limited knowledge of nominal compounds had affected their performance in the tasks. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b1428649x.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.34 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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