More evidence on the unergative–unaccusative distinction in second language grammars

Abstract This study presents new evidence for the structural unergative–unaccusative distinction, in second language (L2) grammars, focusing on elementary-level Japanese-speaking learners of English (JLEs). The underlying distinction of unergatives–unaccusatives is often obscured on the surface strings due to independent syntactic properties such as feature-driven subject movement (in English) or headedness (in Japanese). Nevertheless, based on previous findings, elementary-level JLEs are expected to have reset headedness but have not acquired subject movement. Then, the resulting representation would not involve the properties obscuring the underlying unergative–unaccusative distinction and potentially exhibit it on the surface strings in L2 English. Following these observations, we carefully designed test sentences with un/grammatical word orders that elementary-level JLEs would generate and conducted an acceptability judgment task with native speakers of English and elementary-/intermediate-level JLEs. The results showed that, in contrast to native controls and intermediate learners, who exhibited target-like patterns, elementary-level JLEs incorrectly accepted ungrammatical word orders only with unaccusatives (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 the structural distinction of unergative–unaccusative verbs, and our data provide evidence for the creative construction of an interlanguage in L2 acquisition.