ABSTRACT
Imagine the speaker of Spanish learning English. In a conversation or discussion, she hears someone say, “The police officer was killed by the robber.” Although for the native speaker it is clear that it was the police officer who died, the learner of English may interpret this sentence as “The police officer killed the robber.” Why does the learner make this misinterpretation? It cannot be due to L1 influence because Spanish has the exact same construction: El policía fue matado por el ladrón.
