L2 development of Chinese correlative connectives: Cluster and error analyses

This study explored the categorization and learning difficulties of Chinese correlative connectives in second language (L2) development by analyzing L2 Chinese learners’ performance on three measures in two controlled tasks. A hierarchical cluster analysis revealed that L2 development of Chinese correlative connectives followed a Zipfian distribution: the most frequent, semantically salient, and prototypical connectives were the easiest to acquire, whereas less frequent, semantically complex, and cross-linguistically divergent connectives presented significant learning challenges. Error analysis indicated that L2 learners generally lacked discourse competence and adequate knowledge about collocational usage of Chinese correlative connectives. However, different categories of Chinese correlative connectives posed distinct learning difficulties, with some connective pairs more vulnerable to interlingual influence and others to intralingual interference. This study deepens our understanding of the factors influencing the L2 development of Chinese connectives and provides pedagogical implications for addressing these learning difficulties.