Second language learnability and the acquisition of the argument structure of English locative verbs by Korean speakers

Abstract

The present research focuses on Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ knowledge of the locative alternation (e.g., John loaded hay onto the wagon/John loaded the wagon with hay) and its relationship to theories of language-particular and language-universal properties. Korean, the native language of the participants, has a locative alternation resembling that of English. However, although Korean and English are similar in terms of broad-range constraints, they are dissimilar in terms of narrow-range constraints for locative alternations. This study investigates whether the acquisition of such constraints in English locatives by Korean speakers, and whether the first language (L1) influences the second language (L2) acquisition of locative alternations. Two instruments are used in the experiment: a forced-choice picture-description task and a forced-choice sentence selection task. The study investigates an experimental group of Korean learners of English and a control group of native speakers of English. The results are discussed with reference to universality of linking, to the transfer of argument structure and to Pinker’s learnability theory. The primary results are:

• The Korean learners of English had acquired the constructional meaning of the locative construction (which is related to Pinker’s (1989) concept of broad-range rules and broad conflation classes), a property claimed to be universal.

• They had not achieved native-speaker knowledge of language-particular properties - which narrow conflation class verbs belong to - so that they did not reject ungrammatical sentences; and

• Significant L1 transfer effects were not found.

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