Japanese and Chinese Learners' Acquisition of the Narrow‐Range Rules for the Dative Alternation in English

I investigated the acquisition of narrow‐range rules governing the dative alternation (Pinker, 1989) by adult L2 learners of English: 32 English speakers, 32 Japanese speakers and 32 Chinese speakers participated. I investigated 4 of Pinker's narrow‐range verb classes—the Throw class, the Push class, the Tell class, and the Whisper class: Participants rated the acceptability of prepositional and double object datives containing both made‐up and real verbs in these subclasses. Both Japanese and Chinese speakers distinguished double object datives containing Tell‐class verbs from those with Whisper‐class verbs, but failed to distinguish double object datives containing Throw‐class verbs from those with Push‐class verbs. I suggest that Japanese and Chinese learners' acquisition of the dative alternation in English is governed by the properties of an equivalent structure in their L1 relative to the properties of the target structure.