L2 Acquisition of Conflation Classes of Prenominal Adjectival Participles

This article reports on an investigation into how Chinese‐speaking second language (L2) learners of English develop L2 knowledge of conflation classes of verbs in the formation of prenominal adjectival participles. Four groups of 40 learners and 1 group of 30 native speakers of English participated in the study. They were asked to judge the acceptability of the prenominal adjectival participles placed in 4 different linguistic contexts. The results showed that the L2 learners displayed sensitivity to conflation classes governing the behavior of adjectival participles. Their knowledge developed gradually, in keeping with increasing exposure to English.