AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ USE OF SINO-VIETNAMESE WORDS FROM A LINGUISTIC MARKEDNESS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This study collects errors related to 108 Sino-Vietnamese words from the Global Chinese Interlanguage CorpusQQ). After verifying and analyzing the data, errors that can be explained by existing contrastive analyses were excluded. The study further identifies certain special types of errors that require in-depth exploration from different perspectives. Therefore, based on the theory of markedness in Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, the remaining special errors are analyzed and classified into three categories: syntactic, semantic, and collocational errors. The research points out that through the course of language development, Sino-Vietnamese words and Chinese words still exhibit differences in markedness at the levels of syntax, semantic transparency, and collocational salience. The higher the degree of markedness in a language, the greater the difficulty in acquisition, which increases the likelihood of learner errors.