Lexical causative verbs in the english language: difficulties for uzbek students

Аннотация

This article outlines how learning English as a foreign or second language, Uzbek students have to encounter a large group of verbs collectively called “causative verbs.” Typologically speaking, English belongs to the family of languages which encode two major semantic components “CAUSE” and “CHANGE OF STATE” in a single lexical unit (i.e. a single word) whereas other languages prefer to express these semantic components separately via multiple separate lexical units. Keywords. Lexical parameter, causative verbs, alternating verbs, unaccusative/ergative verbs, psychological or psych verbs, locative verbs. 1.Introduction While the speaker of each language tries to convey his conceptual intentions with words, natural languages can be drastically different from one another in the ways that they put a concept into a word or, in other words, how they lexicalize a concept. A word in one language, therefore, can be morphologically simple while the same concept in another language requires comparatively complex forms, incorporating more than a single semantic component and more than one morpheme. This observation has recently been articulated into a number of theories (for example, Talmy, 1985; Pinker, 1989) [1,2] that explain and predict how different languages follow distinctive lexicalization patterns which are, nevertheless, framed within some natural linguistic constraints. Some of these are thought to belong to a system known as Universal Grammar, a human linguistic endowment whose content was previously elaborated as consisting of primarily syntactic principles and syntactic parameters. The relatively novel concept of lexical parameterization proposed by Juffs (1996) [3], has been applied to English and Chinese and has manifested itself as a valid theoretical-linguistic proposal because of the empirical support it receives from language acquisition research. Based on this “lexical parameter” theory, different languages can actually follow different word-formation patterns that affect both the morphological and the subcategorization properties of the words in the language. In this paper, it will be shown that the lexical parameter operating in a language has a far-reaching effect on how its speakers generate syntactic constructions. 117 Scientific research results in pandemic conditions (COVID-19) 2. Material and Methods When these speakers learn a second language, their mother tongue’s lexical parameter can be transferred to the second language system and can also affect how the second language learners understand and produce certain syntactic constructions in the target language. In some cases learners are disadvantaged rather than aided by the lexical parameter that they transfer from their native language. In order to illustrate the above case, a certain class of verbs namely “causative verbs” in the Uzbek language are pitted against those in the English language, and it will be proved that the lexical parameter that operates in each of the two languages is indeed different. Then, some empirical evidence gained from previous second language acquisition research studies will be presented to show how Uzbek students learning English as a foreign language have considerable difficulty in acquiring this group of verbs. Finally, it will be suggested how the traditional teaching methodology can be improved to facilitate the acquisition of English lexical causatives by Uzbek EFL learners. 3.The Methods and Approaches Following the definition given by Shibatani (1976) [4] the terms ‘causatives’ or ‘lexical causatives’ or ‘causative verbs’ refers to any verbs that denote in their meanings an eventuality encompassing a causing action and the resulting change of state. In terms of formal lexical semantic components, a causative verb or lexical causative is usually composed of two major semantic components: CAUSE, representing the action which the agent performs on a theme or a patient and CHANGE OF STATE, representing the result or the effect on the theme or the patient brought about by the action of the agent. For example, in the verb “open” as in “John opened the door”, the CAUSE component in the meaning of the verb is “to turn a certain thing into a certain state” while the CHANGE OF STATE component is “to be in a state of being uncovered.” Syntactically, causatives are usually transitive or dyadic (i.e. taking two arguments) and hence appear to be transitive on the surface. For instance, the verb “open” is transitive or dyadic in such a structure as “John opened the door” with two arguments including “John” and “the door.” In appropriate contextual and pragmatic conditions, some of these causatives may appear in an intransitive frame and appear to be taking only one argument (i.e. monadic). For example, the verb “open” in such a sentence as “the door opened” with only one argument which is “the door” is intransitive or monadic. These verbs are said to be ‘alternating’ between two different syntactic frames (i.e. t