In this paper, I present my study of the International Corpus of Learner English
(ICLE) –Spanish Subcorpus- in which I have analyzed the use of empty it as a subject in
the English unaccusative constructions produced by Spanish ESL learners. As is well
known, English only admits (generally) preverbal subjects; in contrast, Spanish admits
both pre- and postverbal ones. That is the reason why Spanish ESL learners sometimes
produce postverbal subjects when they use English. Within the context of this error, there
are some ESL learners that include the pronoun it in the preverbal subject position,
although it is not always the case and one never finds this phenomenon with certain verbs;
for instance, it is rather normal to encounter examples like It disappeared a man but the
opposite is true of cases like It sang a child, the normal erroneous version -if it occursbeing
Sang a child.
I analyze the ICLE corpus (Spanish subcorpus) in order to identify the structures
where students use the empty it. Then, I separate the grammatical cases from the
ungrammatical ones, and I focus my analysis on the ungrammatical constructions that
contain it as a subject, using the distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs.
Finally, I apply Bolinger´s (1977:66-89) criteria about the meaningfulness of all types of it
to the pronoun it that L2 speakers use with unaccusative verbs. The work is illustrated with
examples taken from the main authors I use for each classification as well as by real
examples of sentences taken from the Spanish ICLE subcorpus.
Considering previous studies (e.g., Mendikoetxea & Lozano 2013, Bolinger 1977,
among others) my initial hypothesis is as follows:
(i) There will exist a wrong use of it as a subject with unaccusative verbs, but
not with unergatives.
(ii) The use of it is neither the unique result of any internal grammar that
facilitates the acquisition of a language (Universal Grammar), nor L1 transference only or
just the L2 input provided by the teacher.
(iii) This it should have a meaning.
The result of my analysis will show that (i) and (ii) are corroborated but (iii) is not.Universidad de Sevilla. Grado en Estudios Inglese
