Types and causes of errors in focus marking in the Chinese bǎ-construction among second-language learners of Chinese

The acquisition of the Chinese bǎ-construction by second-language learners of Chinese has long been a major focus and a persistent challenge in international Chinese language education. Existing studies have primarily examined this construction from syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic perspectives, while relatively little research has investigated learner errors in terms of information structure and focus expression. Using focus theory as its analytical framework, this study reexamines errors in the acquisition of the bǎ-construction within the broader context of information structure and identifies three types of errors in focus marking. The first is syntactic marking errors, including the omission, inappropriate addition, and substitution of focus-sensitive operators, as well as misidentification of their scope. The second is prosodic marking errors, manifested in incorrect stress placement, the omission of stress, and inappropriate prosodic phrasing. The third is word-order marking errors, primarily involving avoidance of the construction, overuse of the construction, and mismatches between word order and the intended focus structure. The study further examines the causes of these errors from three perspectives: first-language transfer, overgeneralization of target-language rules, and a lack of awareness of focus marking. It also compares the relative difficulty of acquiring the three marking strategies: syntactic, prosodic, and word-order marking. By offering a new perspective on the underlying mechanisms of bǎ-construction acquisition among second-language learners, this study provides practical pedagogical insights into fostering learners' awareness of focus expression in the bǎ-construction in international Chinese language classrooms.