Acquisition of the Aspectual Meanings of Negation Markers in Mandarin Chinese by English-speaking L2 Chinese Learners

This paper examines whether English-speaking L2 Chinese learners are aware of the aspectual meanings that the two negation markers in Mandarin Chinese, 不 “not” and 没(有) “not” express. Test results show that while English-speaking L2 Chinese learners in the early stages of Chinese language acquisition do not have problems using 不 with activity verbs to express habitual negation, they do have problems using 没(有) with activity verbs to express a single episodic negation (Wang, 1965; Li, 2005). It is argued herein that beginner adult L2 learners initially treat 没(有) as a synonym of 不, overlooking the different aspectual meanings these two negation markers convey, and thus restrict their use of 没(有). This results in an overuse of 不 but not vice versa (cf. Wang, 2001; Li, 2004). The test results also show correlations between subjects’ performance on the positive forms and their corresponding negative forms. It is further proposed that practicing the positive form with its corresponding negative form might accelerate the acquisition of the aspectual meanings of these two negation markers.