L2 Acquisition Of English Psychverbs By Native Speakers Of Chinese

This dissertation investigates the second language acquisition of English psych verbs by native speakers of Chinese within the generative theory. One of the unusual properties of psychverbs is their seemingly arbitrary linking. Three theoretical accounts for the linking behavior of psychverbs are reviewed: the finer-grained syntax account of Belletti & Rizzi (1988), the thematic and aspectual account of Grimshaw (1990) and the finer-grained semantics account of Pesetsky (1995).For Belletti and Rizzi (1988), no difference exists between ES and EO verbs at the level of D-structure. However, the two types of verbs differ from each other at the level of S-structure. For ES verbs, nothing happens at the S-structure. Thus ES verbs behave just like any other regular transitive verbs. As for EO verbs, the Theme moves to the subject position in the S-structure. For Grimshaw (1990), ES psychverb has the Experiencer mapped onto the subject position because the Experiencer argument is maximally prominent on both thematic and aspectual tiers. However, EO psychverb has the Theme (realized as CAUSE) mapped onto the subject position because there is a conflict of the two tiers. Pesetsky (1995) claims different theta-grids for the two types of psychverbs: the object with ES psychverb is Target or Subject Matter; while the subject with EO verb is Causer. Pesetsky also proposes a bimorphemic analysis of EO verbs. That is, verbs like amuse contain a verb root√amuse and a zero causative morpheme CAUS. Following Chen (1996), this work argues for the ZERO CAUS analysis of the EO psychverbs.An empirical study is carried out to test whether L2 learners of English have difficulty figuring out the causative nature of EO verbs, since the CAUS associated with EO verbs is phonetically null. A truth value judgment test with the aid of excerpts from an English movie is designed to test the L2 learners'knowledge of the properties of English psychverbs. The results obtained through the experiment are discussed with respect to the issues in SLA. It was found that once learners acquire the ZERO CAUS, they are able to work out the correct argument structure of EO verbs.