Different registers, different grammars in second language production? The dative alternation in spoken and written Chinese learner English

Abstract

The dative alternation, e.g., he gives me two books vs. he gives two books to me, has been extensively studied in World Englishes. However, it remains relatively underexplored in second language learner English, particularly in relation to the influence of verb semantics and contextual factors involving recipient and theme characteristics. Comparative analyses of the probabilistic grammars of the dative alternation across different registers of learner English are also rare. To address these gaps, this study examined the variation of the dative alternation in spoken and written Chinese learner English compared to British English. Using four corpora, we extracted 5,021 instances of dative variants (ditransitive vs. prepositional). Mixed-effects regression analyses revealed similarities in the probabilistic grammars of the dative alternation across registers and varieties, indicated by shared effects of factors such as length, complexity, pronominality and animacy of recipients and themes as well as their interactions. However, distinctions were found in four determinants, including verb sense, head noun frequency of both recipients and themes and definiteness of themes, which are more attuned to acquisitional challenges and cognitive processing limitations.