More Evidence on the Unergative-Unaccusative Distinction in Second Language Grammars

This study presents new evidence for the structural unergative-unaccusative distinction,in second language (L2) grammars, focusing on elementary-level Japanese-speakinglearners of English (JLEs). The underlying distinction of unergatives-unaccusatives isoften obscured on the surface strings due to independent syntactic properties such asfeature-driven subject movement (in English) or headedness (in Japanese). Nevertheless,based on previous findings, elementary-level JLEs are expected to have reset headednessbut have not acquired subject movement. Then, the resulting representation would notinvolve the properties obscuring the underlying unergative-unaccusative distinction andpotentially exhibit it on the surface strings in L2 English. Following these observations,we carefully designed test sentences with un/grammatical word orders that elementarylevelJLEs would generate and conducted an acceptability judgment task with nativespeakers of English and elementary-/intermediate-level JLEs. The results showed that, incontrast to native controls and intermediate learners, who exhibited target-like patterns,elementary-level JLEs incorrectly accepted ungrammatical word orders only withunaccusatives (e.g., *When did arrive the train?) but not those with unergatives (e.g.,*Where did dance the man?). This discrepancy can be attributed to the sensitivity to thestructural distinction of unergative-unaccusative verbs, and our data provide evidence forthe creative construction of an interlanguage in L2 acquisition.