Eunjeong Oh. 2011. L1-Transfer in the Acquisition of English Unaccusativity by Korean Speakers. Language Information . Volume 12. 197-221.
The previous L2-studies on English unaccusativity found that overgeneration of passive unaccusatives is particularly prevalent among Korean speakers, which suggests that L1-transfer is operative in this domain. Nevertheless, the role and extent of L1-transfer hasn't received due attention. To contribute to the accurate characterization of the phenomenon, this paper examines the relevance of L1-transfer in this domain, using a passivization diagnostic. The findings of the study show that Korean speakers experienced more difficulties with particular subtypes of passive unaccusatives, ones whose Korean counterparts include either the morpheme ci - or consist of a verbal noun and hata . It is argued that transfer of a multi-function of the ci - and of unique properties of lexical passives in Korean are held responsible. (Department of English Education, Sangmyung University)
Key words: unaccusativity, L1-transfer, resultative phrase, lexical passive