Selected English small clause types in the interlanguage of Chinese/Taiwanese adults

This study investigates the acquisition of two English constructions: judgment verbs taking small clauses (we consider [Mary intelligent ]) and resultative structures (she hammered [ the metal flat]) in the interlanguage of Chinese/Taiwanese adult learners. The English resultative structure is analyzed as a complex predicate at lexical conceptual structure, while its Chinese equivalent derives from two structures, one compound and one bi-clausal. English judgment verbs involve small clause complements, while Chinese requires full clause structures.; The analysis is based on the results from two kinds of tasks: grammaticality judgments and oral translations, intended to elicit implicit knowledge and explicit access to grammatical patterns.; A number of empirical results emerge from the data. Among the most salient are the following: (1) Learners prefer, and perform better on PP resultative predicate phrases as compared with AP structures. (2) Generally, structures containing unergative verbs seem to pose the greatest difficulty for learners, as compared with unaccusative and unergative structures. (3) Learners produce and accept English resultatives that violate lexical-semantic restrictions, especially in structures containing unergatives and unaccusatives. (4) Learners strongly prefer full clause structures to infinitive or small clause structures as complements to judgment verbs.; The results suggest a different acquisition pattern for the two structures. It seems that the learners can differentiate the two target constructions; however, they perform no better with judgment verbs than with AP resultatives.; Possible explanations for these and other results are explored, including L1 transfer from Chinese, developmental patterns, syntactic complexity, and the effects of English canonical word order. Of particular interest is the relevance of the Subset Principle, since the two structures relate to English differently with respect to that principle, with English resultatives forming a subset to Chinese ones, while Chinese judgment verb structures form a subset with respect to English. The patterning of lexical-semantic violations in the learners' interlanguage is predicted by the Subset Principle. However, their avoidance of infinitive and small clause structures is not in the direction predicted by that principle.; The study leads to pedagogical implications, including the need to incorporate explicit instruction, such as corrections and grammatical explanation, for the acquisition of the target constructions.