Article2000

TRANSITIVITY ALTERNATIONS IN L2 ACQUISITION Toward a Modular View of Transfer

91 citations0/0 files storedStudies in Second Language Acquisition

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EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Second Language Acquisition and Learning

Abstract

This experimental study on English, Spanish, and Turkish as second languages investigates the interaction of universal principles and L1 knowledge in interlanguage grammars by focusing on verbs that participate in the causative/inchoative alternation (such as break in English). These verbs have the same lexico-semantic composition, but differ crosslinguistically as to how they encode the alternation morphologically. Results of a picture judgment task show that, as in L1 acquisition, L2 learners of Turkish, Spanish, and English with different L1s rely on a universal mechanism when learning transitivity alternations. L1 influence plays a prominent role in the morphological realization of the alternation. These findings suggest that UG and L1 knowledge may not affect all linguistic domains in the same way at a given stage of development. It is proposed that transfer is subject to modularity in interlanguage grammars.

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References

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Cited by

2002The l2 acquisition of morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the aspectual tenses preterite and imperfect 2012THE ROLE OF SEMANTIC TRANSFER IN CLITIC DROP AMONG SIMULTANEOUS AND SEQUENTIAL CHINESE-SPANISH BILINGUALS 2010The Acquisition and Teaching of the Spanish Subjunctive: An Update on Current Findings 2011The transfer of V2: inversion and negation in German and Dutch learners of English 2001First-language-constrained variability in the second-language acquisition of argument-structure-changing morphology with causative verbs 2006

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