Acquisition Of English Ergative Construction By Chinese EFL Learners

Since Perlmutter put forth the Unaccusativity Hypothesis in 1978,a great deal of research has been done on ergative construction from the point of view of Transformational-Generative linguistics and Systemic-Functional linguistics.This paper attempts to explore the acquisition of English ergative construction by Chinese EFL learners in the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar.The core meaning of English ergative construction is " the patient-subject changes the state as the result of the action denoted by the verb ".The constraints of the English ergative construction involve:(1) The preverbal NP in the English ergative construction is the patient and must undergo the action denoted by the verb in the construction.(2) The English eragtive construction does not presuppose an Agent.(3) The event described in the construction is a specific event,not a generic event in the sense.Besides, there are also two restrictions on English ergative verbs:(1) The ergative verb is without exception verb of change of physical or mental state or location.(2) The ergative verb shows a feature of lacking of volitional control.English ergative constructions are very complicated,which pose great difficulty on L2 learners.This paper aims to tackle the following three questions:(1) Do Chinese EFL learners experience the same degree of difficulty in acquiring different categories of English ergative construction?(2) Does the learners' knowledge of English ergative construction improve as they progress in their general language proficiency?(3) What are the possible clues/strategies used by Chinese EFL learners to acquire English ergative construction?The study recruited a total of 90 Chinese EFL learners as subjects, who represent learners from three proficiency levels:beginning(S3), intermediate(U2) and advanced(EM).The research results showed that the Chinese EFL learners experienced different degrees of difficulty in the learning of the four categories of English ergative construction.It forms a cline from the easiest category to the most difficult category as:category A＞category D＞category B＞category C.The learners' knowledge of ergative construction tends to improve as they progress in their general language proficiency.The learners mainly use their sense of English language,their knowledge of Chinese ergative and traditional English grammar rules to judge the English ergative construction.