Dative Constructions and Passivisation in Japanese and Chinese L1 Learners of English

This study tests the lexical mapping hypothesis (LMH) within Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998) with special reference to dative constructions in English L2.

The LMH hypothesises that L2 learners develop their mapping of thematic arguments to grammatical functions, proceeding from ‘default mapping’ to ‘default mapping plus additional argument’ and then to ‘non-default mapping’.

This study incorporates Her’s (2013) modification of Lexical Mapping Theory within LFG (Bresnan, 2001). The study hypothesises that the prepositional dative is acquired at the ‘default mapping + additional argument’ stage while the double-object dative and dative passivisation are at the ‘non-default mapping’ stage.

To test the hypothesis, speech productions were collected through a picture-description task from 22 Japanese L1 and 15 Chinese L1 learners of English L2. The learners' L1s were selected because of the typological contrast exhibited by dative constructions: Chinese has the double-object dative, but Japanese does not. Results support the hypothesis, as Japanese L1 and Chinese L1 learners mainly produced prepositional datives, with only three of them producing double-object datives.

Surprisingly, double-object constructions developed even later than dative passivisation. The late acquisition of the double-object construction is likely due to the cognitive complexity of the construction, such as lexical constraints, rather than mapping complexity.

Date

Friday 12 July 2024

Time

1 to 2 pm

Location

Online via Zoom

Speaker

Professor Satomi Kawaguchi
Western Sydney University

Suggested pre-reading

Bresnan, J. (2001). Lexical-functional syntax. Blackwell Publishers.

Her, O.-S. (2013). Lexical Mapping Theory Revised. In T. H. King & V. d. Paiva (Eds.), From Q\quirky to case to representing space: Papers in Honors of Annie Zaenen (pp. 47-59). CSLI Publications.

Pienemann, M. (1998). Language processing and second language development: Processability Theory. John Benjamins.