Parameter Resetting In The Acquisition Of English Psych Verbs By Chinese ESL Learners

Studies of the second language acquisition of psych verbs have observed that psych verbs constitute some learnability problems for L2 learners, due to the misalignment problem of arguments to syntactic positions with psych verbs. The present study investigates the acquisition of English psych verbs by Chinese ESL learners. The study in particular looks at the linking problem of Psych verbs and attempts to answer the following questions: is the linking of Experiencers in psych verbs also determined by the principles of UG such as Thematic Hierarchy? Do the L1 and parameter resetting play a role in the acquisition of English psych verbs by Chinese learners of English?The empirical investigation, using a grammaticality judgment task, is carried out within the framework of "Full Transfer/Full Access", focusing on the acquisition of psychological change of state verbs with Experiencer Objects (e.g., frighten), and psychological change of state verbs with Experiencer Subjects (e.g., fear). Causative verbs that denote a physical change of state and have agentive subjects (e.g., break) are also included in the test for purposes of comparison.Data collected from the empirical investigation shows that Chinese learners do experience difficulty learning English psych verbs, but this difficulty is more prominent with the EO psych verbs. The results also show that the learners of the low proficiency level make more mistakes on EO psych verbs, while the learners of the high proficiency level act more or less like native speakers of English. This suggests that a process of parameter resetting is involved in the course of second language acquisition, because as learners' English proficiency improved, the L1 parameter setting is replaced by the L2 parameter setting. All the Chinese learners of English tend to prefer the periphrastic use of psych verbs than the transitive use of psych verbs. This can be attributed to the fact that Chinese expresses causation overtly with a separate verb shi meaning "make", which indicates that L1 transfer does play a role in the L2 acquisition of psych verbs. These phenomena can be accounted for within the framework of Full Access/FullTransfer Hypothesis. It is concluded that in the acquisition of English psych verbs by Chinese learners, difficulties arise as grammatical knowledge of the L1 interacts with UG, and that the acquisition process can be regarded as one of parameter resetting.