An Empirical Study On The Acquisition On English Verb Raising By Chinese College Students

The early research on L2 acquisition within the framework of generative grammar mainly concentrates on the issue whether UG is available.However,research focus has shifted from verifying the problem of whether UG is access in L2 learners to that of the grammatical properties of Interlanguage grammar.With the improvement of the theory,verb raising has been noticeable in the second language acquisition research.As the thematic verbs in both English and Chinese finite contexts cannot be raised overtly,if the Chinese learners raise the verbs optionally,it cannot only be concluded that the Interlanguage grammar is not impaired but also the influence of transfer of L1 can be excluded.In addition,the modal verbs in Chinese and in English are different.The former cannot be raised overtly,while the latter must be raised overtly.As a result,parameter resetting can also be investigated.However,the previous studies did not discuss the verb raising parameter comprehensively.Thematic verbs are tested much more than non-thematic verbs.And the placement of finite verbs related to VP-adverbs and negators has been the focus of the studies.So this study tries to investigate all the subsumed syntactic properties of verb raising in a large amount of subjects to make the data more comprehensive and convincing for the conclusion.This study tries to explore whether the Interlanguage grammar is impaired and whether parameter resetting is realized through investigating on the acquisition of verb raising by Chinese-speaking learners of English within the framework of MP.The subjects are 108 students of non-English majors who come from Henan Normal University.The subjects are divided into groups according to the results of Oxford Quick Placement Test before taking the translation task and the grammaticality test in which there are four items including negators,adverbs,quantifiers and inverted questions.The collected data show that the subjects have acquired that the thematic verbs must be put on the right of the adverbs and negators.As for the non-thematic verbs,the results show that the subjects have known that the verbs should be placed on the left of the adverbs and negators as well as at the initial part of the inverted sentences.All the results indicate that the second language learners have acquired that thematic verbs cannot be raised overtly from VP and non-thematic verbs must be raised from VP overtly.The acquisition of the four constructions is different.The performance of the placement of the verbs with the quantifiers is the worst and that of the verbs with the negators is the best.The performance of the thematic verbs with the adverbs is worse than that in the inverted questions.The performance of the non-thematic verbs with adverbs is better than that in the inverted questions.The proficiency of the students has influence on the English verb raising.There is a significant between-group difference in their judgment on all the four verb constructions in terms of the thematic verbs which means that it has great effect on the thematic verb raising.There is a significant difference between groups in the performance of the non-thematic verbs with the quantifiers.The acquisition of other non-thematic verb constructions is not influenced by the proficiency of the subjects.The study supported the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis that the Interlanguage grammar is not impaired and the parameter resetting can be realized during the course of the second language acquisition.