ai-li c. hsin ( 忻愛莉 ) english dept., nknu email: gealhsin@nknucc.nknu.tw
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I Disappoint You or You Disappoint Me:
L2 Acquisition of English Psych Verbs by Chinese EFL Learners
Ai-li C. Hsin (忻愛莉 )
English Dept., NKNUEmail: gealhsin@nknucc.nknu.edu.tw
Introduction
What are Psych Verbs? The positions for the stimuli and the
experiencer in the sentences
e.g. Please
John’s words pleased everybody.
Everybody was pleased by John’s words.
e.g. Enjoy
The children enjoyed the story.
Types of Psych Verbs
Theme-Experiencer Verbs Experiencer-Theme Verbs
Mapping Arguments to Their Syntactic Positions The alternation of argument structure
between the two classes of psych verbs
1a. The student fear exams.
(Experiencer = Subject)
1b. Exams frighten the student.
(Experiencer = Object)
Mapping Arguments to Their Syntactic Positions
Possible Explanation (1) Thematic Hierarchy (Grimshaw, 1990)
Agent > Experiencer > Goal > Theme Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis
(UTAH) (Baker, 1988)
UTAH: Identical thematic relationships between items are represented by identical structural relationships between those items at he level of D-structure
Mapping Arguments to Their Syntactic Positions Predicted Errors (White et al. 1999)
2a. *The students frighten exams.
2b. *Exams fear students.
Mapping Arguments to Their Syntactic Positions
Possible Explanation (2) Pesetsky (1995)
The major difference between the two classes of psych verbs is in ‘the presence of a cause argument’ in theme-experiencer verbs.
Errors occur because learners cannot distinguish the causative nature of theme-experiencer verbs.
Conflation in Psych Verbs (Juffs 1996)
CAUSE and STATE can be conflated in one verb. (See 3a)
The other alternative construction: The periphrastic construction of causative verb make (See 3b)
3a. The students’ behavior disappointed the teacher.
3b. The students’ behavior made the teacher disappointed.
Conflation Parameter of Psych Verbs
White (2003) explained that the conflation of semantic primitives CAUSE and STATE is not possible in Chinese. Hence periphrastic causative is adopted.
This the parametric variation between English and Chinese.
3a. The students’ behavior disappointed the teacher.
3b. *學生的行為失望了老師。
Conflation of CAUSE and STATE in Chinese The conflation of semantic primitives CAUSE an
d STATE in Chinese is limited to a few words, but not entirely impossible.
4a. Ta55 fan35 wo214. He annoy me‘He annoyed me.’
4b. Ta55 shi214/rang51 wo214 hen214 fan35.
he make me very annoyed
‘He made me annoyed.’
Conflation of CAUSE and STATE in Chinese The problem with conflation of CAUSE and
STATE in Chinese: Ambiguity.
5. Ta55 qi51 ta55 lao214-gong55.
she angry her husband
a. She made her husband angry.
b. Her husband made her angry.
Passive Theme-Experiencer Sentence vs. Adjectival Structure Cupples (2002):
In English, a passive theme-experiencer sentence resembled an adjectival structure and is more readily comprehensible than an active theme-experiencer sentence.
6a. The students’ behavior disappointed the teacher.
6b. The teacher was disappointed.
(lao214shi55 jue35de0 hen214 shi55wang51).
Research Design
Hypothesis
1. A psych verb is more difficult to acquire than an action verb.
2. An experiencer-theme verb is less problematic than a theme-experiencer verb.
3. L2 learners do not distinguish the two types of English psych verbs randomly; they can better tell one type from the other as their proficiency level improves.
Research Design
101 Chinese-speaking learners of English participated in the study.
39 junior high school students
40 senior high school students
22 graduate students (all majored in English)
Research Design
Materials A total of 12 sentences were investigated in a
grammaticality judgment task. Three correct sentences and one incorrect sentence for each verb type.
Incorrect sentences were constructed by misplacing the arguments.
Samples of test items: 1. E-T verb: The girl feared big cats. 2. T-E verb: *His father surprised his decision3. Action verb: Students played basket ball.
Result and Discussion
Mean scores for each verb type
action verbs > experiencer-theme verbs >
theme- experiencer verbs
This order correlates with the Thematic Hierarchy
Agent > Experiencer > Goal > Theme
Result and Discussion
The general performance by the three groups
Graduate Students > Senior H Students >
Junior H Students
Means scores for psych verbs
Junior H Students > Senior H Students
Result and Discussion
Action Verbs
Significant differences are found between
Graduate and Junior H, Senior H and Junior H E-T Verbs
Significant differences are found between
Graduate and Senior H, Graduate and Junior H T-E Verbs
Significant differences are found between
Graduate and Senior H, Graduate and Junior H
Result and Discussion
Verb type Graduate vs. Senior
Senior vs. Junior
Graduate vs. Junior
action 0.391 (n.s.) 0.001** 0.001**
E-T verb 0.000*** 0.676 (n.s.) 0.002**
T-E verb 0.000*** 0.036* 0.021*
Significant difference bet. 3 Groups in Verb Categories
Result and Discussion
Active-Passive Contrast In the graduate group, a significant difference
of active-passive contrasts is observed for both action verbs and T-E verbs.
In the senior h group, no significant difference is observed for any verb types.
In the junior h group, a significant difference of active-passive contrasts is observed for action verbs and T-E verbs.
Result and Discussion
Active-Passive Contrasts for the Three Groups
Graduate Group
Senior H Group
Junior H Group
Verb Type Mean Mean Mean
Action-Active 0.89 0.84 0.48
Action-Passive 1.00 0.95 0.82
E-T Active 0.65 0.25 0.25
E-T Passive 0.59 0.20 0.36
T-E Active 0.48 -0.05 0
T-E Passive -0.09 -0.25 0.33
All Active 0.68 0.35 0.24
All Passive 0.59 0.30 0.50
Result and Discussion
Accuracy Rate by the Three Participant Groups
Junior H Group
Senior H Group
Graduate Group
Action Verbs 72% 92% 94%
E-T Verbs 59% 62% 82%
T-E Verbs 43% 48% 68%
Conclusion
1. All three groups show the same order of acquisition – action verbs > (learnt before) E-T verbs > T-E verbs.
2. The senior high group succeeded less well in psych verbs than the junior high group; it could be reasoned that the senior high group is in the process of parameter resetting and thus confounding the two subcategories.
3. For Chinese learners the passive construction of the T-E psych verbs is easier than the active construction.
Thanks for your attention!
Questions and feedback are welcome!
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