Learning Argument Structure Generalizations in a Foreign Language

Abstract

Goldberg (1997:385) proposed that constructions aid in the acquisition of verb meaning by determining the general scene that is being referred to. The results of an experiment (Bencini and Goldberg, 2000) proved that people recognize constructional meanings and suggests that constructions may be 'natural' linguistic categories easily recognized by speakers. Taking this idea as a starting point, two questions are addressed in this paper. Do constructions help in the acquisition of a second language? And, how do constructions work in languages like Spanish which, unlike English, have a rich morphology?