A Study on the Acquisition of English Verb Raising by Chinese College Students

Studies on the item of whether Interlanguage grammar is impaired did not reach any consensus. With the improvement of the UG theory, verb raising has been noticeable in the second language acquisition research. The thematic verbs in both English and Chinese finite contexts cannot be raised overtly and non-thematic verbs such as the modal verbs in Chinese and the counterparts in English are quite different. The results in the empirical study show that the students have got the knowledge that the English thematic verbs cannot be raised and the modal verbs must be raised. It means that the Interlanguage grammar is impaired and the parameter resetting can also be investigated.