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Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background and Significance of the Study
In human history, science exists to describe, explain and even tries to predict thephenomena in nature and in society. The fundamental idea or principle underlyingtraditional scientific researches has been the linear reductionism which has dominatedthe scientific field since Isaac Newton (Larsen-Freeman, 1997). The reductionisminsists that a phenomenon could be best understood by analyzing its reducedcomponents (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). That is to say, the reductionismtakes the componential factors as the research objects and then collects the isolatedfindings together, attempting to describe and explain the whole (Larsen-Freeman,2007). For example, the structuralist theories in modern linguistics, founded bySaussure, have regarded languages as abstract, separate and static systems of signals,while the Transformational Generative Grammars schools, represented by Chomsky,have simplified languages into grammatical minimalism, and excluded suchlanguage items as vocabulary, phonemes, dialects, syntax, or discourses, only with thecore grammars left. “Actually, all substantial items in the second language learninghave been out of the linguistic theories” (MacWhiney, 2006). These two influentialtheories are the representatives of reductionism applied in linguistics. Both claim “thegrammatical rules are the arithmetic operators while the vocabulary are the arithmeticobjects, that’s to say, the rules process the lexical items” (Elman, 2004). Languagelearning has been considered as the rules learning in an ideal decontextualized way(Larsen-Freeman, 2010).
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1.2 Purpose of the Study
According to Sun Mutian, the so-called dynamic systems theory refers to theresearches of things or entities from the dynamic point of view; namely, it focuses onthe processes, variation, development and their interacting factors to study theobjective world. The languages are an open, non-equilibrium and nonlinear complexsystem while all the processes in the natural world are essentially nonlinear dynamic.Thus, the application of the nonlinear dynamic theories in the researches of thenonlinear features and chaotic behaviors of languages systems will the future trend inthe language development. However, though it has been 15 years sinceLarsen-Freeman introduced it into the second language acquisition, no adequatedynamic researches have been made in the language attrition, the reverse aspect oflanguage acquisition, which is the indivisible part of the language developmenttogether with the language acquisition. At present, some linguists have realized thesignificance of the language attrition and that is why the term of “languageacquisition” used in the traditional researches has been replaced by the “languagedevelopment” in the dynamic researches. In this case, this thesis attempts to design aresearch on the non-English major graduates in the Chinese context to analyze theirEnglish vocabulary attrition from the DST perspective based on the empirical data,hoping to apply the new dynamic view into the language attrition researches andresolve some problematic attrition issues in practical language teaching.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 The Application of DST in SLD
Dynamic system theory (DST) was first founded in the theoretical mathematics to本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。