Effects of Verb Bias on L2 Learners’ Acceptability Judgments of English Sentences

• Published in: 언어학 no. 90; pp. 3 - 21
• Main Author: Ji Hyon Kim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 사단법인 한국언어학회 01.08.2021
• Subjects: 언어학; verb bias frequencies; acceptability judgment task; L2 learners; English verb acquisition
• ISSN: 1225-7494; 2508-4429
• DOI: 10.17290/jlsk.2021..90.3

Using an acceptability judgment task, this study examined whether L1 Korean L2 English learners were sensitive to the continuous nature of verb bias frequencies in English verbs. L2 learners rated the grammatical acceptability of English sentences containing verbs differing in verb bias: direct object (DO) bias, equibias (EQ), or sentential complement (SC) bias. The results showed that the participants were able to employ their knowledge of verb bias information in their acceptability judgments. The L2 learners showed a strong preference for the DO sentence structure for DO-bias verbs, which decreased for EQ-bias verbs and was weakest for SC-bias verbs. Furthermore, the mean ratings for each verb were significantly correlated with previously reported L1 verb bias frequencies. These results suggest that L2 learners’sensitivity to verb bias frequencies is continuous in nature and reflects the probabilistic frequencies found in monolingual English data. Issues regarding the use of a split-group design and analysis in L2 processing studies are also discussed. KCI Citation Count: 0