The status of thematic verbs in the second language acquisition of Chinese: against inevitability of thematic-verb raising in second language acquisition

Abstract

This article reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Both French and German are languages which allow thematic verbs to raise. In contrast, thematic verbs in English and Chinese must remain in situ under V at PF. It has been widely reported in the second-language and nonnative language (L2) literature that (optional) thematic-verb raising occurs in SLA, and L2 researchers have accounted for this phenomenon on the basis of some hypotheses proposed for the initial state of SLA. Although these hypotheses differ from each other in explaining the presence of thematic-verb raising in SLA, they all predict that thematic-verb raising is inevitable in SLA by speakers of a verb-raising language. Some go so far as to predict thematic-verb raising in SLA by speakers of a non-verb-raising language. The study reported in this article provides robust evidence that the thematic verb does not raise in SLA of Chinese, which casts doubt on the reliability of these hypotheses in the L2 literature. Both judgement data and oral production data in the study clearly indicate that thematic verbs remain in situ in L2 Chinese. No optionality occurs at any proficiency level. These findings are accounted for in terms of the absence of verbal inflection in Chinese and the evidence in the L2 Chinese input data for the specification of the abstract features associated with the head of IP.

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