Second Language (L2) researchers have been studying ‘passive’
unaccusative errors such as What was happened?, but have not yet reached a
consensus about the ultimate cause of this unique interlanguage structure. This
article critically reviews five major accounts proposed in the literature, namely:
• transfer of a compound tense/aspect structure in the learner's
first language (L1);
• overgeneralization of adjectival passive formation in English;
• nontarget lexical causativization;
• identification of the passive morphosyntax with the lack of a logical
subject; and
• nontarget overt marking of syntactic NP movement.
By analysing each account in terms of its ramifications in light of the data already
available in the literature and additional data from a large corpus of nonnative
English, I demonstrate that the most plausible account of the
‘passive’ unaccusative structure is to regard it as an overt
marker of NP movement, an overgeneralization of the passive morphosyntax of the
target English.
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