The English locative alternation relates sentences of the type John loaded hay onto the wagon to those of the type John loaded the wagon with hay. Some locative verbs occur in both of these patterns, others in only one or the other. It is known that there are differences among languages with respect to which verbs are possible. The present research focuses on the constructional meaning of the locative alternation and on the constraints governing verbs that can participate in the alternation. One characteristic of the “ground-object” locative is that the object tends to be viewed as completely affected. This is known as the holism effect. Additionally, English has certain narrow constraints on the verbs that can occur in the two constructions. This study investigates whether native speakers of Korean learning English develop knowledge of the holism effect in the English locative and knowledge of the narrow constraints. English native speakers and Korean learners of English participated in a forced-choice picture-description task. Native speakers of Korean also judged an equivalent test instrument in Korean. The primary results are these: When given a ground-object structure, both learners and English native speakers preferentially chose a ground-holism picture. We interpret this as a reflection of the holism effect: Learners, like native speakers, have knowledge of this aspect of the constructional meaning of the locative. English native speakers also show their knowledge of the narrow conflation classes by rejecting ground-object structures containing verbs that are not permitted in this structure, even if the picture would be appropriate. Korean learners show no effect for narrow verb class. We interpret this as showing that the learners have not achieved native-speaker knowledge of the narrow classes. Korean uses a different basis for verb classification.