Second Language Acquisition Of English Dative Alternation

This thesis is an empirical study on the second language acquisition (SLA) of English dative alternation structure, centering on the acquisition of L2 semantic properties. The previous SLA studies have evidenced morphological, semantic and structural transfer effects respectively. However, their relations between each other are not seriously addressed. The current study attempts to explore L2 semantic property acquisition by investigating the interaction between L1 semantic transfer effects and L1 structural transfer.Our study starts with the theoretical review of literatures on dative alternation construction from the form-meaning mapping perspective. It has revealed a universal semantic hierarchy—verbs denoting core meaning of transfer is more davitizable than an extended one. Upon the comparison between Chinese and English dative alternation structures, we have found the core meaning range of transfer in Chinese is much narrower than that of English.The empirical study first attests whether the core meaning range of L1 Chinese is broadened into a wider L2 English range for adult learners. Secondly, the predictions of the L1 semantic transfer hypothesis sometimes are contradictory with that of the L1 structural transfer hypothesis. The test result can show how these two effects interrelate with each other.A grammaticality judgment test is run on adult L1-Chinese L2-English learners. The results indicate that the semantic hierarchy is under restructuring for L2 learners but the process is not complete, especially for those that lacks positive evidence in L2. The data also highlights that L1 structural transfer is subject to the mastery of semantic features. In the end, the data cluster results are in support of the core-to-extended meaning hierarchy of dative verbs.