Effects of structural complexity and L1 experience on L2 acquisition of Chinese multiword sequences

Chinese directional complement (DC) constructions, as a subtype of Chinese multiword sequences, are challenging to acquire for second language (L2) learners. However, little is known about L2 Chinese learners' acquisition of figurative DCs and their comprehension of literal and figurative DCs. This study investigated whether the acquisition of Chinese DCs by English learners of Chinese was influenced by the syntactic and semantic complexity of DC constructions, and learners' first language (L1) experience, through a situation-cued sentence completion test and grammaticality judgment test. Analysis of the performance by 58 L1 English learners of Chinese on the tests revealed that learners' acquisition of DCs was affected by the syntactic complexity of DC constructions, whether DCs were used literally or figuratively, and the L1 experience of English learners of Chinese. The findings of this study have implications for teaching Chinese DC constructions, and potentially other Chinese multiword sequences.