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Previous studies have shown that dependency distance and its probability distribution can be applied as syntactic indicators of English as interlanguage. However, the universal application of these indicators has not been verified from the perspective of language typology. The issues are addressed in the present study based on a treebank of Chinese interlanguage of English and Japanese native speakers. The findings are as follows: (1) with the improvement of L2 proficiency, the MDDs of learners with different native language backgrounds gradually approach that of the target language in different patterns, and dependency distance is of universal significance as a metric to measure the development of interlanguage's syntactic complexity; (2) Chinese interlanguage also follows the principle of least effort, and its probability distribution of dependency distance, like those of natural languages, presents a power–law distribution, which can successfully fit the Zipf-Alekseev distribution; (3) the right truncated modified Zipf-Alekseev distribution can be used to measure Chinese interlanguage proficiency, and the fitting parameters of the probability distribution of dependency distance as a metric of interlanguage proficiency are also of universal value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the neural cognitive mechanisms of aspectual processing in second language (L2) learners have focused on Indo-European languages with rich inflectional morphology. These languages have aspects which are equipped with inflected verb forms combined with auxiliary or modal verbs. Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to Mandarin Chinese, which has limited morphological inflection, and its aspect is equipped with aspectual particles (e.g., le, zhe, guo). The present study explores the neurocognitive mechanism of Mandarin Chinese aspect processing among two groups of late Mandarin Chinese proficient learners with Thai (with Mandarin Chinese-like aspect markers) and Indonesian (lack of Mandarin Chinese-like aspect markers) as their first language (L1). We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) time locked to the aspect marker le in two different conditions (the aspect violation sentences and the correct sentences). A triphasic ELAN-LAN-P600 effect was produced by the Mandarin Chinese native speakers. However, there was no ELAN and LAN in Indonesian native speakers and Thai native speakers, except a 300–500 ms negativity widely distributed in the right hemisphere and P600-like effect. This suggests that both groups of Mandarin Chinese learners cannot reach the same level as Mandarin Chinese native speakers to process Mandarin Chinese aspect information, probably due to the complex feature of Mandarin Chinese aspect maker, the participants' L2 proficiency and age of L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Quantitative linguistics is employed to study interlanguage as a system. • Interlanguage of speakers with different L1 has different typological characteristics. • Improvements are made to the study scope of linguistic typology. • An in-depth understanding of the characteristics of the interlanguage system is provided. Interlanguage studies have shifted over time from the early qualitative studies to quantitative studies of specific linguistic structures. However, the focus of these studies is usually on a partial aspect of an interlanguage instead of the whole system. Therefore, there remains a paucity of quantitative studies on interlanguage from the typological perspective. Based on a syntactically-tagged corpus that we built, and taking a quantitative linguistic metric, this paper reports the typological change in Chinese interlanguage from two native language backgrounds i.e., English and Japanese. The findings show that (1) the interlanguage of native English speakers and native Japanese speakers have the same preference for SV and VO; (2) interlanguage is a gradual developmental system, and the typological features of native language have an influence on the development of interlanguage typological features; (3) typological markedness between NL and TL affect the development of interlanguage's typological features, and experience with L2 can also influence L2 acquisition; (4) the dependency direction can be universally applicable as an indicator to investigate the overall development of interlanguage typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]