Asymmetric syntactic and thematic reconfigurations in English speakers’ L2 Chinese resultative compound constructions

This article reports on an empirical study investigating whether English speakers are able to reconstruct resultative compound structures in their second language (L2) grammars of Chinese. Results of an acceptability judgment test suggest that there are asymmetric developments in the syntactic and thematic structures of learners’ L2 Chinese resultative compounds. Syntactically, learners at intermediate and advanced stages behave native-like by allowing an activity predicate to select directly a result predicate, with the fusion of the two appearing to the left of the object, leading to the correct Chinese word order. However, they find it difficult to discard the L1-based thematic structures in their L2 Chinese. The asymmetric developments found in learners’ L2 Chinese resultative structures point to the necessity of making distinctions between syntactic and thematic developments in the study of L2 grammars.