Implicit Learning of Chinese Numeral Classifiers Using the Stimulus Equivalence Paradigm

Abstract

Chinese Numeral Classifiers (NCs), which are obligatory in the quantification of nouns, have been observed to pose serious challenges to learners of Chinese as a second language. Learners typically have difficulties generalizing the use of classifiers to new nouns and produce collocation errors due to: (1) the inherent complexity and inconsistencies of the Chinese NC system and (2) insufficient exposure to input containing classifier-noun collocations. The current study adopted a pre-testpost-test randomized group design to investigate whether implicit instruction using the stimulus equivalence (SE) paradigm (Sidman, 1971) would have a positive impact on the learning of Chinese NCs and whether the variability in classifier category membership (determined via typicality ratings of native Chinese speakers) would influence the learning process. Eighty-Seven native-English speakers, assigned to one of two learning conditions (an implicit learning [i.e., SE] group or an explicit learning group), were systematically exposed to four Chinese NCs. Only the group that learnt Chinese NCs using the SE paradigm showed a significant improvement in overall classifier retention one week after training. More fine-grained analyses revealed that the implicit-learning (SE) group was significantly more accurate in generalizing the use of the classifiers to new objects than the explicitlearning group when matching classifier-object pairs with lower typicality ratings. In the case of classifier-object pairings with high prototypicality ratings, the overall effectiveness of implicit learning of Chinese NCs (based on the SE paradigm) was comparable to the explicit instruction condition. The results highlight the SE paradigm’s success vis-à-vis explicit instruction in facilitating the inferential learning of fuzzy rules based on less prototypical classifier-object pairings. The findings of the study contribute to our understanding of the Chinese NC system as well as semantic categorization from a cognitive linguistic perspective and have significant implications for the development of effective instructional methods to optimize language learning.

Keywords

• chinese numeral classifiers
• implicit-explicit instruction methods
• stimulus equivalence paradigm
• typicality effect