The Selective Use of Specific Exemplars in Second‐Language Performance: The Case of The Dative Alternation*

Abstract

This study examined the selective use of two give structures [NP NP] and [NP PP] in two (translation and judgment) tasks by Japanese college students within a framework of transfer and markedness. The results of the translation task showed that in dealing with prototypical cases of dative give, the students used the two structures with equal frequency, while the [NP PP] was strongly favored with cases deviating from the prototype. In the acceptability‐judgment task, we were concerned with the type of constraints on dative alternation. Three constraints were discussed in this paper: discourse, semantic, and perceptual. The students in this study were more sensitive to the perceptual than to the discourse constraint, which was subtler and more opaque than the semantic one from the students' point of view. This study favors a theory of sealer markedness over a theory of binary markedness as far as acceptability judgments about give sentences are concerned.

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