Abstract：Abstract: Through an acceptability judgment test, a Chinese-to-English translation test, a question-and-answer test and an interpretation test, 90 Chinese learners of English were investigated to see how they reassemble the features encoded in wh-on-earth construction. The results show the features encoded in “daodi…wh…”were firstly mapped onto wh-on-earth, and the features were reassembled in the sequence of “[WhQ]→[uwh]→[-information seeking]/[-D-link]→[WhProp]”. The paper argues that [WhQ] feature is successfully reassembled because of the total correspondence in L1 and L2. However, the non-correspondence in feature will increase the difficulty in feature reassembly. In addition, the syntax-discourse features like [-information seeking] and [-D-link] are more difficult because more than one domains are involved. Finally, due to lack of positive or negative evidences in English, [WhProp] feature is not successfully reassembled.
Key words: wh-on-earth; Feature Reassembly Hypothesis; mapping; reassembly; asymmetry
