An Empirical Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of English Unaccusative Verbs

Since the Unaccusative Hypothesis proposed by Permutter (1978), researches on the acquisition ofunaccusative verbs has become a hot topic in the field of Second language study. Oshita (1997,2001)proposed “Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis” claiming English unaccusative verbs’ acquisition taking aU-shape developmental pattern. Sorace (1995,2000) proposed “Split Intransitivity Hierarchy” which statesthat there exists a universal continuum or hierarchy of gradients for unaccusative and unergatives verbs,and the position of the verb category will influence its acquisition. The present study makes asystematically study of these subclasses of unaccusatives and testified the two hypothesis above.This study is cross-sectional with a total of142participants of three different proficiency levels:primary, intermediate and advanced. Two experimental instruments are employed, namely, production taskand grammatical judgment task to explore Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of English unaccusatives. Thepresent study is aimed to answer the following two questions:1) To what extent, do Chinese EFL learners sensitive to split Intransitivity Hierarchy?2) What developmental pattern do Chinese EFL learners follow in the acquisition of the subclasses ofunaccusative verbs?The findings of this study can be summarized as follows:1) Chinese EFL learners are sensitive to the semantic hierarchy in their performance. Specificallyspeaking, verbs of Change of State (alternating) is the most difficult to acquire for Chinese EFL learners,even for the advanced learners. Verbs of Change of location are the easiest to acquire. As for leaners’performance on verbs of Continuation of pre-existing, it is the most variable.2) In general, learners across sections retreat faster from NP-Be-Ven, NP1-V-NP2with these at the corethan those at the periphery. Chinese EFL learners display different characteristics in their acquisition of thefive subclasses of unaccusatives. They perform differently on the same subclass of unaccusatives withdifferent tasks and different patterns in the same task. Learners have more accurate production in NP-Vpattern, which indicates Input plays an important role in the acquisition of unaccusatives.3) In terms of the developmental pattern of unaccusative verbs, learners become increasingly sensitive to the SIH. The developmetal pattern of each subclass unaccusaitve verb displays differently in differenttasks. For example, in producing NP-V pattern and in accepting and rejecting NP-Be-Ven pattern in GJT.They present a “raising linear” developmental pattern. As in rejecting NP1-V-NP2pattern in GJT, thedevelopmental pattern presents a “plow-shaped-like”. In short, no “U-shaped” developmental pattern isfound. The data from the present study does not support UTH.The present study can shed some light on the nature of second language acquisition and provide someinsights into second language teaching. Teachers need to pay special attention to those unaccusative verbswhich may bring about some difficulties to learners. On one hand, by organizing a series of learning tasksto stimulate student to note the such category of unaccusative verbs, on the other hand, improve the learner’semantic cognitive level on unaccusative argument structure through intensive courses.