Abstract
Interlanguage studies tend to be dominated by investigationsof strictly morphosyntactic phenomena. Issues of argumentstructure and argument realization are shown to be a potentiallyinnovative theoretical approach to the study of L2 learners’knowledge of target language grammar, as they are framedas an interface between semantics and syntax. In this article,evidence of language transfer effects in Brazilian L2 learners’representation of transitivity alternations in verbs of mannerof movement are presented to support the view that secondlanguage research on the acquisition of argument structurerealization patterns is a promising line of enquiry.
Highlights
Interlanguage studies constitute an important domain of Second Language Acquisition as a discipline
It is the case that interlanguage representations of this construction will need to be learned as a new syntactic configuration by the acquirer of English as a foreign or second language whose native language is Brazilian Portuguese, as knowledge of their mother tongue will not provide them with structural hints that a sentence of this kind is possible in their target language
One hypothesis is that the image of a jockey and horse jumping over a fence may prompt readers of the accompanying sentences (Tom could make the horse jump over the first fence, Tom could jump over the first fence with his horse, and Tom could jump his horse over the first fence) to perceive them as linked to the scene from a semantic-pragmatic point of view, in both Portuguese and English
Summary
Interlanguage studies constitute an important domain of Second Language Acquisition as a discipline. This claim can be testified by a quick look at relevant journals such as Second Language Research and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. When it comes to the acquisition of English as a non-native language, the number of descriptions of interlanguage properties of learners from varied linguistic backgrounds abounds. As highlighted elsewhere (Souza & Mello, 2007), the growing body of studies on the development of L2 representations of grammar can make a major contribution to the substantiation of theoretically relevant claims about the nature and emergence of non-native language acquisition by documenting robust multilingual evidence. Considering the fact that communicative capacity in foreign languages tends to be highly valued in Brazilian society and that there is a large population of foreign language learners in Brazil, this is a state of affairs seriously in need of being reversed
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