The Need to Draw Second Language Learners' Attention to the Semantic Boundaries of Syntactically Relevant Verb Classes

Abstract

This paper puts forward the view that second language (L2) learners could benefit from being made aware of the semantic components which unify verbs that display a certain syntactic behaviour, and, more significantly, the semantic components which exclude other verbs from participating in this behaviour. In other words, an awareness of the parameters of verb classes could minimize both syntactic overgeneralization and under-generalization. This viewpoint is supported by the findings of a study in which production and judgement data on the behaviour of 'change-of-state' and 'directional motion' verbs were elicited from learners at three levels of lexical proficiency. While learners with high lexical proficiency had fewer overgeneralizations than their lower-level counterparts, overgeneralization was substantial at all levels of proficiency in the directional motion class. The results suggest that it might be beneficial to combine grammar and vocabulary instruction in L2 curricula, with a special focus on semantically coherent verb classes.