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, acquisition of second languageargument structure is attracting attention (Juffs, 1996; Sorace, 1993 ;). The dativealternation is one of the constructions which have received due interest in the SLAliterature (Bley-Vroman and Yoshinaga, 1992; Sawyer, 1996; Inagaki, 1997). And theEnglish dative alternation was probably the first argument issue to receive attention inthe L2 literature. Children will overgeneralize DODs to illicit DODs; however, theywill finally attain adult-like level without negative evidence. Pinker (1989) discussedthis learnability problem, since then, researchers have investigated this issue fromdifferent perspectives. Mazurkewich (1981) investigated the acquisition of dativealternation based on markedness theory, claiming that PDs is less marked than DODs,so the former is easier to learn than the latter, and some researchers (Gropen et al, 1989Mazurkewich &White, 1984 and Sawyer, 1996, etc) focused on the acquisition ofdifferent constraints on the dative alternation and investigated their acquisition order.Whong-Barr & Schwartz (2002) investigated the issue of whether L1 transfer, whichwas widely attested in adult L2, was also witnessed in child L2. In particular, theyaddress the morphological transfer hypothesis of Montrul 1997. However, the mixedresults these studies yielded call for more controlled studies if any conclusive resultsare to be reached. These studies all focused on the acquisition of dative alternation in abroad sense; however, the present study will focus on the fine-grained verb classes inthe framework of Pinker’s theory and investigate the acquisition of narrow rangedative verbs by Chinese EFL learners.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

In this chapter, in Section 2.1, I introduce the theoretical background of dativealternation in English and Mandarin Chinese. In Section 2.2, I review the theoreticalbackground and literature on the acquisition of dative verbs related to the present study.In Section 2.3, I conclude this chapter with a summary.

2.1 Theoretical Background
This thesis aims to study the acquisition of English narrow range dative verbswithin Pinker’s framework (1989), specifically; they are the Broad and the NarrowRange Rules, which govern the alternation of dative verbs. This section is devoted tothe introduction to Pinker’s theory and gives a brief analysis of the semantics of theEnglish and Chinese dative alternation.

2.1.1 The Dative Alternation in English
In this section, the Broad and Narrow Range Rules of English are presented.Moreover, their sub-rules or constraints are given and exemplified. These sub-rules orconstraints are the animate possessor constraint, and Narrow Range Rules andmorphonological constraints related to the present study.Pinker (1989) put forward his explanation for the phenomenon on why some verbscould alternate, while others could not. He thought that there were two different butrelated thematic cores that affected the alternation. And they were projected tosemantic representation or semantic structures; one is a PD (prepositional dative)construction, and the other is a DOD construction.

Chapter 3 Research methodology........... 31-35
    3.1 Participants......... 31
    3.2 Materials .........31-32
    3.3 Procedures......... 32-35
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