The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 19 , No. 3
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Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 407-431
Abbreviation: KASELL
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print)
Print publication date 30 Sep 2019
Received 16 Aug 2019 Revised 10 Sep 2019 Accepted 19 Sep 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.19.3.201909.407

Overpassivization of English Unaccusatives Revisited: A Look Behind the Scenes
Jungeun Choi
Researcher, Center for Educational Research Seoul National University 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Korea (choi7541@snu.ac.kr)

Abstract

This paper examines what causes Korean learners of English to struggle to acquire English unaccusative constructions by investigating the learners’ decisions in a grammaticality judgment test. Unlike other related studies, this paper took a closer look behind the test results in order to reveal what lies in learners’ overpassivization of these forms. It also considered differences among English language proficiency levels in the sources of overpassivization errors. A total of 67 Korean learners of English participated in the study, and some of them were asked for a retrospective interview based on their answers in the test. The results showed that overpassivization depended on the inherent verb types and the presence of passive morphemes in L1 translation. Moreover, the effects of such factors differed according to L2 proficiency. As for the learners’ underlying mechanism for the construction, three primary causes were found: the conceptual presence of external causers, the inanimacy of the subject, the knowledge of lexical items. Based on the results, pedagogical implications are suggested.

Keywords: English unaccusatives, overpassivization, source of errors, Korean learners of English
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