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!