Does preemption help adult second language learners learn verb transitivity?

Abstract

Investigating the effects of preemption as one of the ways of unlearning overgeneralization errors, this study examined whether Japanese-speaking second language (L2) learners of English successfully learned transitivity alternations of novel verbs that denote manner of motion. Provided with intransitive and transitive novel verbs, low intermediate learners made transitivity errors even though they had not heard the alternative uses of the given verbs. However, these overgeneralization errors were infrequent in the cases where preemption cues were provided, suggesting that the L2 learners' analytical abilities facilitate unlearning based on preemption. While previous L2 studies observed that preemption could not overcome the errors ascribed to negative transfer from L1, the present study demonstrates that preemption works for the overgeneralization errors that are not rooted in the learners' L1 properties, and therefore, preemption is available as a learning mechanism or strategy in second language acquisition.