Psych Predicates In Uyghur And The L3 Acquisition Of English Psych Predicates In L2 Chinese Context By Native Uyghur Speakers

This dissertation investigates the true properties of Uyghur psych predicates and the third language acquisition of English psych predicates by adult Uyghur native speakers in L2 Chinese context. The most unusual property of psych predicates is the mismatch linking between syntactic positions and the thematic roles which seems to be a universal problem for EFL learners. This dissertation consists of two major parts as its title suggests, linguistic analysis of Uygur psych predicates and the third language acquisition of English psych predicates in L2 Chinese context by native Uyghur speakers.In the first part, several theories are reviewed for accounting the arbitrary linking problems of the psych predicates, for example, the fine-grained syntax accounts of Belletti & Rizzi (1988), the proto-role theory of Dowty (1991), and the fine-grained semantics account of Pasetsky (1995). This is followed by a discussion of psych predicates (including verbs like worry and annoy, and adjectives like surprising and surprised) across the English, Chinese and Uyghur languages. In particular, an intensive investigation of Uyghur psych verbs is carried out.Psych predicates are further examined within the typological framework in this part. The typological causativization patterns in English, Chinese and Uyghur languages are investigated on the basis of a cross-linguistic analysis, and it is shown that all the three languages have both lexical and analytical causatives. Subsequently, it is argued that it is the canonical causativization pattern which marks the causativization properties of English, Chinese and Uyghur different:lexical for English, analytical for Chinese, and morphological for Uyghur. For the first time, special attention is given to the properties of Uyghur psych predicates. Specifically, this dissertation provides a new classification for Uyghur psych verbs, discovers the inner rules of psych verbs, and test their backward binding and T/SM restriction in the Uyghur context.The second part of this dissertation is concerned with an empirical study conducted on Uyghur learners’knowledge of English psych predicates in L2 Chinese context. The difficulty in the acquisition of English psych predicates by Uyghur students mainly lies in the opaqueness of Zero CAUS, which is concealed in Object Experiencer verbs such as excite and surprise. This learnability problem is investigated within the framework of Semantic Salience Hierarchy Model (Zhang,2007). To empirically verify our hypotheses about psych predicates, a Grammaticality Judgment Test and a Writing Projection Test were designed and administered to three groups of participants, Uyghur learners of English, Chinese learners of English and English native speakers, with the latter two serving as control groups. The Uyghur learners of English are divided into two groups according to their primary and secondary education background, Uyghur Education Background (UEB) and Chinese Education Background (CEB) to examine the influence of L2 Chinese.All results indicate that L2 and L3 learners gradually developed sensitivity to zero CAUS as their English and Chinese proficiency improved. Overt causative morphology like -en in the target language should have a facilitating effect, but the effect was inhibitory with the Zero derivied OE verbs and further affixation of -ing to the zero-derived OE verbs in VingAs. Advanced CEB learners were significantly more accurate with periphrastic OE verbs than with zero derived OE verbs, suggesting the influence of the analytical causativization rule in Chinese. Although morphological causatives are the typical causativization pattern for Uyghur, no positive results of L1 transfer were found in this research. The results are discussed with respect to the issues in second and third language acquisition.