Abstract
The paper deals with inappropriate or erroneous use of the Czech preposition pro ‚for’ in combination with some verbs involving the meaning of ‚Transfer’ in the use of L1 Chinese speakers. Such examples from the Czech learner corpus CzeSL-SGT include a) infelicitous syntactic constructions, e.g. Můj kamarád zaplatí pro mě. ‚My friend will pay it for me.’ and b) overuse of the preposition pro in contexts where dative form is preferred by native Czech speakers, e.g. Už jsem koupil letenku pro tebe. ‚I already bought you a ticket’ Napíšeš dopis pro mě. ‚You will write me a letter.’ Kamarádka posílala dárky pro mě. ‚My friend sent me gifts.’
According to Liu (2006), Mandarin Chinese has three types of ditransitive constructions: [V NP1 NP2], [V gei NP1 NP2] and [V NP2 gei NP1], of which the first two represent Double object (DO) construction with synonymous meanings, while the latter is an instance of Prepositional dative construction. Hong, Zhang & Liu (2020), on the basis of corpus-based collostructional analysis of 34 Chinese verbs with the basic meaning of ‚Transfer’, argue that seven of them have strong tendency to combine with the DO construction, i.e. the verbs expressing 1) the ‚Act of Transfer’ (provide, give, return) and 2) the ‚Knowledge/Information Transfer’ (teach, advise, tell, ask). On the other hand, verbs with the meaning of ‚Intended/Incomplete Transfer’ are associated with Prepositional dative construction (write, make, take, send, donate, introduce, buy, sell), even though the alternative constructions are not completely ruled out in all cases.
In Czech, the abovementioned meanings are preferably expressed by the DO construction. Furthermore, ‚Intended/Infomplete Transfer’ and ‚Benefaction’ meanings can be additionally expressed by the preposition pro. On the contrary, the ‚Benefactive’ sense is ruled out from the DO construction in Chinese.
Under the construction grammar approach (Goldberg, 1995), syntactic constructions are supposed to be learned combinations of form and meaning. Hence, for non-native speakers to be able to use them in an appropriate way, it is necessary to acquire language-specific pairings of form and meaning. Until this is achieved, syntactic structures in L2 may be subject to L1 interference effects, as illustrated by the introductory L2 Czech examples, which mimic Chinese ‘Intended/Incomplete Transfer’ structures strongly associated with Prepositional construction.