Passive Unaccusatives In L2 English

Passive unaccusativity refers to a phenomenon whereby L2 English speakers produce unaccusative verbs in passive constructions. Since unaccusative verbs are a subset of intransitive verbs and thus generally do not passivize, the question of how learners recognize unaccusatives without any overt input distinguishing subsets of intransitives has piqued the interest of many researchers since the late 1970's. Oshita's (2000) claim that passive unaccusatives are NP-movement markers is now a widely accepted claim; however, studies of more general characteristics of intransitivity have revealed close parallels between passive unaccusatives and other well-documented phenomena. The aim of this paper is to show that passive unaccusativity patterns with these other more general phenomena. A corpus of essays written by L2 English speakers was used for this purpose, yielding mixed results. Oshita's claim was not supported while predictions given more general characteristics of intransitive verbs were only minimally supported.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. in Modern Languages

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Modern Languages

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Davis, Chad Tyler

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christopher Sapp
• Allison Burkette

• Linguistics

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/896

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1895