Young EFL students’ reliance on path-breaking verbs in the use of English argument structure constructions

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which young EFL students rely on pathbreaking verbs in the comprehension and production of English argument structure constructions. In a sentence-sorting task, Korean EFL learners in grades 7 and 10 sorted English sentences, which were created by crossing four verbs with four constructions, into same groups according to overall sentence meaning and form. The results showed dominant verb-oriented sorting in grade 7, and more construction-biased sorting in grade 10 when the sentence included a path-breaking verb. In a written production task, Korean EFL students from grades 4 to 7 wrote a book report in English after a 4-week extensive reading program. The results demonstrated the more dominant use of path-breaking verbs in the ditransitive and resultative constructions than in the caused-motion construction. We discuss these findings in terms of usage-based perspectives of constructional learning.