The Acquisition of Disyllabic Word Collocations by Intermediate- to Advanced-Level Learners of Chinese as a Second Language

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the learning and teaching of verb-noun disyllabic word collocations (DWCs), a key marker of formal language in Chinese that facilitates effective communication in formal contexts, among intermediate and advanced Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) learners. First, it examines the distribution of DWCs in widely used textbooks across North American CSL programs and assesses their authenticity in reflecting real-world usage. A corpus analysis revealed that DWCs appear late in elementary-level textbooks; as proficiency levels increase, both the number and diversity of DWCs grow, while their repetition rates decline. Most DWCs corresponded to authentic language use, though a small subset—predominantly in advanced-level textbooks—did not. Second, the dissertation evaluates CSL learners' collocational competence, operationalized as receptive and productive knowledge of DWCs. Four online tasks revealed that even advanced learners were significantly outperformed by native speakers. Learners demonstrated stronger receptive than productive knowledge, struggled most with semantic constraints and least with prosodic constraints, and showed that vocabulary size reliably predicted task accuracy, while proficiency predicted processing speed. Third, the study investigates whether textbook input influences learners' knowledge. Results indicate that DWC token frequency (i.e., frequency of occurrence) facilitated learner automaticity, consistent with the Usage-Based Approach (UBA). However, DWC type frequency (i.e., the number of distinct collocates for a given node word) did not significantly enhance creative production and even increased generalization difficulty. Finally, the study explores whether targeted training can enhance learners' understanding and use of DWCs. Findings show that implicit input flood in the training significantly improved learner performance, whereas explicit instructor-guided generalization did not yield additional benefits. The dissertation concludes with pedagogical implications for material design, instructional strategies, and task development for Chinese as a second language.