The Acquisition of Causative/Inchoative Verbs in L2 Turkish

Abstract

This experimental study investigates the relationship between lexical semantics and derivational morphology in the acquisition of causative/inchoative-related verbs in Turkish as a second language (L2) by Spanish and English speakers. Results of a picture judgment task show that although L2 learners have largely acquired the correct lexico-syntactic classification of verbs in Turkish, they were constrained by the morphological patterns of their first language (L1) when learning derivational morphology, especially with causative/inchoative verbs. Results also show failure to reject transitivity errors and inappropriate derivational morphology with unaccusative, unergative, and noncausative/inchoative transitive verbs. The transitivity errors documented are analogous to the overgeneralization errors reported in the L1 and L2 acquisition literature of English and other languages. It is suggested that L2 learners incorrectly adopt the lexico-syntactic representation of change-of-state verbs (the semantic template of an accomplishment) when they are not clear about the event-type classification of a particular verb. In this study, I also suggest that L2 learners are atuned to the rich morphology of Turkish and that the acquisition of derivational morphology and lexical semantics are not dissociated in these interlanguage grammars.