L2 Unaccusative Relative Clauses

Abstract

This paper argues against an assumption in relative clause (RC) acquisition (1) that direct object (DO) RC is more difficult than subject (SUB) RC in L2 as well as L1 (Hsu, Hermon, & Zukowski, 2009; Kwon, Peter, Lee, Kluender, & Polinsky, 2010) and (2) that the distance between head NP and gap in RC determines processing difficulty born in RCs (the Structural Distance Hypothesis; the SDH) (O’Grady, Lee, & Choo, 2003). According to the SDH, the structural distance is deeper in DO RC than in SUB RC. This paper raises a concern that unaccusative (UNA) RC can pose a problem to this assumption because UNA RC is a SUB RC but its structural distance is the same with DO RC. A cross-sectional oral-translation elicitation task was employed to investigate this contradiction with sixty-seven adult L1 Korean learners of English. The findings reveal that (1) UNA RC is more difficult than SUB RC and DO RC and (2) that UNA RC and DO RC bear different processing difficulties despite the same structural distance. This paper proposes that the source of difficulty born in UNA RC lies with the probe T in search of its matching goal, having a different featural agreement route from SUB RC and DO RC.