In the literature, L2 learners of English are reported to have problems accepting grammatical unaccusative sentences like the cup broke yesterday although they accept the passivized form like the cup was broken yesterday (e.g. Yip 1995; Ju 2000). They also produce ungrammatical sentences like “If the World War III is happened, . . .”. It has been suggested that these phenomena are universal in the development of L2 English because they occur in the English of L2 learners with different L1s (cf. Ju 2000). In this paper, we present an empirical study investigating whether these non-target phenomena also occur in L2 Chinese. It is found that English speakers of Chinese at different proficiency levels fully accept the NP-V unaccusative construction. Optionality is observed in English speakers’ non-target passivized unaccusative verbs of change of state, which are argued to be due to L1 transfer when English speakers incorrectly treat Chinese change-of-state verbs as causative. Overall, our results suggest that the overpassivization phenomenon should not be considered universal in the L2 acquisition of unaccusativity despite their prevalence in L2 English.
Mahdun, Mahanum, Mei Yuit Chan, Ngee Thai Yap, Bee Eng Wong & Zalina Mohd Kasim
2023. Overpassivisation in L2 Acquisition: An Examination of L1 Malay ESL Tertiary Students’ Passivisation of Intransitive Verbs in English. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities 31:3 ► pp. 995 ff.
Oshita, Hiroyuki
2022. “Conceptualizable Agent” revisited: A critical evaluation of theoretical construct, testing design, and account of Overpassivization. Lingua 276 ► pp. 103372 ff.
Pae, Hye K., Jing Sun & Detong Xia
2022. The Tendencies of Overpassivisation and Overuse of Be Verbs in the Writing of Chinese Learners of English and Applications for Practice. In Challenges Encountered by Chinese ESL Learners, ► pp. 187 ff.
Pae, Hye K., Brian Schanding, Yeon-Jin Kwon & Yong-Won Lee
2014. Animacy Effect and Language Specificity: Judgment of Unaccusative Verbs by Korean Learners of English as a Foreign Language. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 43:2 ► pp. 187 ff.
Pae, Hye K.
2012. Linguistic Relativity Revisited: The Interaction between L1 and L2 in Thinking, Learning, and Production. Psychology 03:01 ► pp. 49 ff.
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