The acquisition of Italian as L3 by L1-Chinese learners under the influence of L2-English: a study on determiners and adjectives.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive study on the acquisition of Italian articles and adjective order by Chinese learners who are influenced by their prior acquisition of English. The study adopts a syntactic DP perspective and aims to investigate the challenges and difficulties faced by Chinese students when learning Italian, specifically focusing on DP structures. It further explores how Chinese students gradually acquire DP structures in Italian by comparing them with the syntactic DP structures in English. Additionally, the research analyzes the developmental paths and evolutionary patterns of Chinese students' acquisition of DP structures. Factors influencing their acquisition, such as language background, learning strategies, and language input, are also examined. The study concludes by proposing teaching strategies and methods that can assist Chinese students in mastering the DP structure in Italian more effectively. The research questions addressed in this study are as follows: What are the patterns and challenges in the acquisition of determiners in L3-Italian by L1-Chinese learners under the influence of L2-English? How does the acquisition of adjectives in L3-Italian by L1-Chinese learners under the influence of L2-English occur and progress? To address these questions, quantitative research and corpus methodology are employed, involving data collection through written tasks and oral interviews. The collected data were analyzed using a combination of statistical analysis and qualitative techniques such as error analysis and comparative analysis. The results of this study indicate that In the case of Chinese students learning Italian, there are both positive and negative language transfer effects influenced by English, but the process follows the general language learning process, such as from simple to complex, and so on. These findings have significant implications for the guide for Chinese students to learn L3-Italian with the acquisition of L2-English. However, it is important to note the limitations of this study: this study focuses on school students and cannot be extended to all Chinese learners of Italian.