This study draws on recent corpus-based information to investigate the influence of frequency on Korean ESL learners’ acquisition of English verbs occurring with the double object construction (DC). Thirty low English proficiency Koreans (LPK), 30high English proficiency Koreans (HPK), and 30 native English speakers (NS)participated in an acceptability judgment test and an elicited production task featuring six high frequency (HF) verbs and six low frequency (LF) verbs. Results indicate that (a) both the LPK and the HPK more favorably accepted and more frequently produced DC sentences with HF verbs than with LF verbs and (b) the HPK more favorably accepted and more frequently produced DC sentences with both HF and LF verbs than the LPK. These results are interpreted as evidence for the significant role of frequency in Korean learners’ acquisition of English verbs occurring with the DC. The study ends with a discussion of theoretical and pedagogical implications.

This study attempts to present clearer evidence for L I influence by attending to the fact that semantically comparable English and Chinese ditransitive verbs do not always behave similarly. Thirty Korean and 30 Chinese ESL learners participated in an acceptability judgment test and an elicited production task. The two L I backgrounds were chosen because Korean allows only the adpositional construction (A C) while Chinese allows both the AC and the double object construction (DC). For the tasks, three different types of English ditransitive verbs were selected based on how their translations are used in Chinese: verbs whose Chinese counterparts occur with the DC only (D-type); verbs whose Chinese counterparts occur with the AC only (A-type); and verbs whose Chinese counterparts occur with both the AC and the DC (B-type). The results indicate that: (a) regardless of verb types, the Korean group more favorably accepted and more frequently produced AC sentences than DC sentences; (b) verb types influenced the Chinese group's acceptability ratings and production; and (c) the two groups showed the biggest inter-group difference when they were given DC sentences with the D-type verbs, and the smallest inter-group difference when they were given AC sentences with the A-type verbs.