Word Order Typology and the Acquisition of Chinese “Verb + Resultative” Compound Verbs: Insights from Brain Science and Learner Corpora

This chapter will focus on the acquisition of Chinese “Verb + Complement” resultative compound verbs. Chinese resultative compound verbs are among the most difficult forms for Japanese first language (L1) speakers, although Japanese also has a rich system of compound verbs. This phenomenon is observed in the L1 Chinese Japanese learner corpus. It is difficult for Chinese L1 speakers to learn Japanese compound verbs; non-use is observed rather than misuse. In light of these L2 acquisition difficulties, we present how word order typology affects second language (L2) acquisition in the fields of brain science and learner corpus research and propose Chinese pedagogy based on learners’ L1.