Not All Unaccusatives Are Acquired Equal: Between-Verb Variations in Chinese Learners’ Acquisition of English Alternating Unaccusatives

Abstract

AbstractEnglish unaccusatives pose a great challenge to L2 learners. L2 acquisition of these verbs has drawn consistent attention from researchers. However, between-verb variations have been largely neglected by previous studies. This study focuses on the between-verb variations in Chinese learners’ acquisition of English alternating unaccusatives. Through a combined use of a written production task and an acceptability judgment task, it was found that there were significant between-verb variations in Chinese learners’ acquisition of English alternating unaccusatives. Case studies showed that Chinese learners mainly acquired the transitive use of break and the intransitive use of sink. Interviews and a textbook corpus survey suggested that the variations between break and sink were mainly caused by verb semantics and relative frequency. Based on these findings, this study concludes that not all unaccusatives are acquired equal by L2 learners on the grounds that English alternating unaccusatives do not pose the same acquisition problems to L2 learners. It advises L2 researchers to consider the theoretical implications of the between-verb variations in L2 acquisition of English alternating unaccusatives. It also recommends L2 teachers to teach these verbs with an integrated approach of rule-based and item-based methods.KeywordsChinese learnersAlternating unaccusativesBetween-verb variationsVerb semanticsFrequency