The typical measurement by which the nature of second language grammars is evaluated is the input of native speakers. This paper reports on data from Mandarin speakers of English (n = 19), with an average of 10;3 (year;month) length of residence in the U.S., and native American English speakers (n= 19), and looks at how they dealt with causatives, resultatives, and depictives under four experimental conditions. It was found that native participants did not always behave reliably; they altered, swung, and oscillated just like nonnative counterparts, and there were multiple cases where their fluctuation rates were way higher than those of the latter. Such variances were brought about by the effects of construction, task, or modality. These results cast doubt on the common practice of assessing second language grammars in terms of native intuitions and call on researchers to reconsider the assumption that second language grammars that are legitimate must be native-like.
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