Unaccusative Verbs in English-Chinese Interlanguage Grammars

Chuan-Kuo Shan

《英語教學與文化》 3期 (2007/08) Pp. 8-15

https://doi.org/10.29721/ETC.200708.0002

並列摘要

In English, the single argument of an unaccusative verb is base-generated in object position and then obligatorily moves to subject position. In the literature, L2 learners of English are widely reported to avoid grammatical unaccusative sentences like The cup broke yesterday, while preferring a passivized form like The cup was broken yesterday. They also make ungrammatical sentences like ”If the World WarⅡ is happened, ……” Many second language researchers have considered these phenomena universal in the development ofL2 English.
An empirical study is conducted to investigate whether overpassivization errors and the avoidance phenomenon also occur in L2 Chinese. The study involves 52 adult English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese at high-intermediate, advanced and near-native levels. Like English, Chinese allows the argument of the unaccusative verb to move to subject position. It is found that English-speaking learners at different proficiency levels fully accept the NP-V construction, which contrasts strikingly with the widely-reported finding in L2 English. We will also argue that the passivization errors in L2 Chinese are different from those reported in L2 English; while L2 learners of English inappropriately use English passive morphology to overtly mark NP-movement involved in unaccusative constructions, the passivization errors in L2 Chinese are due to L1 transfer of English speakers who incorrectly treat Chinese change-of-state verbs as causative. The directionality between L2 English and L2 Chinese can be explained in terms of the availability of morphology for passives in the target language. It is argued that overpassivization and the avoidance phenomenon should not be considered universal in L2 unaccusativity despite their prevalence in L2 English.