This article reports the findings of a study in which transfer of verb properties wasinvestigated via syntactic data elicited from second language (L2) learners. It was hypothesizedthat a learner's first language (L1) would influence the acquisition of verbs in those L2semantic classes where so-called L1-L2 translation equivalents could be found. To investigatelexical transfer, the performance of Hindi-Urdu speakers on tests of English causatives wascompared with that of Vietnamese speakers, because there are significant differences betweencausativization patterns in Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese. To account for proficiency-basedvariation in performance, learners were placed in one of three levels of lexical proficiency inEnglish, and Mann-Whitney comparisons were made between Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamesespeakers at corresponding proficiency levels. It was found that the performance of the Hindi-Urduand Vietnamese groups differed significantly in several semantic contexts. Generally, the resultssuggest that there is some transfer of semantic information from the L1 verb lexicon to theemerging L2 verb lexicon. More specifically, the findings suggest that verb properties aretransferred selectively and that transfer plays a role in the difficulty or ease involved in theshedding of overgeneralized lexical rules.