Second language acquisition of English double object construction by Korean speakers

This thesis examines first language (L1) transfer and acquisition of form-to-meaning mappings in the adult second language (L2) acquisition of English Double Object (DO) constructions. The issues are examined using grammaticality judgment data from adult L1-Korean L2-English learners.; First, a structural transfer hypothesis is formulated, according to which L1 structural properties undergo transfer, and structural (in)comparability between the L1 and L2 is crucial in determining the relative success of L2-acquisition. Second, this thesis investigates how L2-learners acquire form-to-meaning mappings, in particular when the target mappings cannot be acquired via L1-transfer and are not easily deducible from L2 positive input. Study of such poverty of the stimulus cases allows us to directly examine whether, and how, learners recover from negative L1-transfer effects, and can potentially provide evidence for L2-learners' access to Universal Grammar (UG).; This thesis examines the structural properties of Korean and English DO constructions and proposes that goal DOs in these two languages are structurally comparable whereas benefactive DOs are structurally different. This syntactic distinction has a semantic correlate: while goal DOs in both languages and benefactive DOs in English encode a (prospective) possession relation, Korean benefactive DOs encode a wider benefactive meaning.; These structural similarities and differences between English and Korean DOs are well-suited for testing the structural transfer hypothesis, which predicts that L1-Korean L2-English learners should accept English goal DOs but reject English benefactive DOs. Empirical data from the first experiment support those predictions.; Next, this thesis considers whether L2-learners are capable of recovering from negative transfer effects on English benefactive DOs. Results of the second experiment show that L2-learners are able to acquire the target form-to-meaning mapping for English benefactive DOs through emerging sensitivity to semantic constraints.; It is concluded that (1) L1-transfer is operative in L2-acquisition at the level of syntax and (2) L2-learners have access to UG-based syntactic and semantic distinctions, which allow them to overcome the poverty of the stimulus problem. These findings furthermore provide support for a novel account of the syntactic and semantic properties of Korean DO constructions.