This article presents three related experiments on the acquisition of two classes of
causative verbs: physical change of state verbs with agentive subjects (e.g.,
English break) and psychological change of state verbs with experiencer
objects (e.g., English frighten) in English, Spanish and Turkish as second
languages by speakers whose native languages are English, Spanish, Turkish and
Japanese. These verbs participate in the causative/inchoative alternation
crosslinguistically, but the morphological expression of the alternation varies in
the four languages. English has predominantly zero-morphology, Spanish has
anticausative morphology, and Turkish and Japanese both have causative and
anticausative morphology. Assuming the tenets of the Full Transfer/Full Access
Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), results of a picture judgement task testing
transitive and intransitive sentences and manipulating overt/non-overt morphology on
the verbs show that morphological errors in the three languages are constrained by
the morphological patterns of the learners’ first language (L1s). In
addition to showing that formal features of morphemes transfer but
morphophonological matrices do not, this study refines the role of L1 influence in
the morphological domain by showing that the morphophonological shape of affixes
transfers as well.
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