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This bidirectional study investigated the L2 acquisition of plural marking in L2 Indonesian by native Korean speakers and in L2 Korean by native Indonesian speakers. Indonesian and Korean are classifier languages with partially overlapping restrictions on how pluralization interacts with quantification, allowing us to test the acquisition of new L2 features vs. the preemption of L1 features that are not in the L2. We also examined how the contextual complexity of new L2 features impacts development. Seventy learners at three L2 Korean proficiency levels and 40 native controls participated in Experiment 1; 61 learners at three L2 Indonesian proficiency levels and 39 native controls participated in Experiment 2. All participants completed three tasks – a Sentence Completion Task, a Grammaticality Judgment Task and a Multiple-Choice Task. Whereas learners were largely able to overcome the difficulty of preemption, they were less successful in acquiring new L2 feature contrasts in more complex conditioning environments.

Within a Principles and Parameters framework, parameters are hypothesized to constitute highly restrictive options, or points of variation of a theoretically relevant sort between languages, responsible for "certain complexes of properties typical of particular types of languages". In 2001, Hawkins provides a succinct and elegant statement: Principles define the structural architecture of human language. This chapter provides a few L2 acquisition examples to illustrate how the feature-reassembly approach illuminates the nature of the learning problems facing the acquirer of a second language beyond that of a feature-selection approach. It is clear that locating the source of morphological variability in a distinct morphological component of the grammar requires a separationist model of grammar, in which the output of syntactic computation is indirectly mapped via morphological (or phonological) module-specific translation procedures to actual phonological forms. The chapter includes some notion of morphological competence in any attempt to account for variability in second language acquisition.

This chapter explores the role of perceptual salience, or the detectability, of morphosyntactic feature contrasts within a feature reassembly framework (Lardiere, 2009). Under this approach, L2 learners are presumed to search for morpholexical items in the L2 whose features appear to correspond to those in the L1-for example, those expressing plural number, negation, case, definiteness, etc. This position contrasts with that of so-called representational deficit views. In this chapter I discuss possible differences in detectability between interpretable and uninterpretable features; that is, whether formal contrasts in uninterpretable features are subject to more frequent or more significant signal-to-noise reductions than interpretable feature contrasts. I argue that, in addition to the robustness of phonetic cues to feature contrasts, the detectability and complexity of co-occurrence conditions on the expression of a particular feature play a major role in the acquisition of that feature.

This study examined the second language (L2) acquisition of the Korean plural marker -tul by native speakers of English. Seventy-seven learners at four Korean proficiency levels along with 31 native Korean-speaking controls completed five tasks designed to probe for knowledge of particular features and restrictions associated with so-called intrinsic and extrinsic plural-marking in Korean. The results suggest that knowledge of both types of plural developed with increasing proficiency. However, the features associated with the intrinsic plural, which is more similar to the English plural in terms of grammatical function, were more easily acquired than those of the extrinsic (distributive) plural, which requires recruiting the features of a completely distinct morpholexical item from the first language (L1). We also found some developmental evidence for a feature hierarchy in quantified Korean noun phrases, in which the most deeply-embedded featural co-occurrence restriction on intrinsic plural-marking was the latest acquired.

In this article I discuss the selection and assembly of formal features in second language acquisition. Assembling the particular lexical items of a second language (L2) requires that the learner reconfigure features from the way these are represented in the first language (L1) into new formal configurations on possibly quite different types of lexical items in the L2. I illustrate the nature of the problem by comparing the assembly and expression of features involved in plural-marking in English, Mandarin Chinese and Korean, and situate this comparison with respect to specific claims of the Nominal Mapping Parameter and within a discussion of parameter (re)setting more generally. I conclude with a few even more general thoughts on the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in (second) language acquisition.

In a recent airing of methodological concerns in the analysis of spontaneous speech samples, Lakshmanan and Selinker (2001) suggest that Lardiere (1998a) should have carried out analyses of lexical aspect and discourse grounding in determining obligatory contexts for past tense marking. Failure to do so, they argue, renders the work in question susceptible to the comparative fallacy (Bley-Vroman, 1983). In this reply I would like to briefly address some of the problems with that argument, while showing that such analyses could themselves introduce a comparative fallacy problem.

This article addresses current proposals in the literature suggesting that thematic verb-raising is optional in the grammars of L2 acquirers, due either to failure to acquire verbal agreement morphology or to an impairment of the mechanism relating the ‘richness’ of morphological agreement paradigms to syntactic feature strength. I examine naturalistic longitudinal production data from Patty, a native Chinese speaker whose L2 English grammar has ‘fossilized’ with regard to verbal agreement morphology. The data show that, despite the omission of regular agreement suffixation in about 96% of obligatory contexts, thematic verbs are never raised in Patty's English,thus showing no optionality of raising.The results indicate that even in cases where regular verbal morphology is neveracquired,it is still possible for the learner to determine feature strength and the status of verb-raising in the target language.

This article reviews recent SLA studies which have methodologically assumed a direct relation between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and the development of functional phrase structure in the syntax. Results from naturalistic production data collected over eight years apart are reported, establishing the ‘fossilization’ of English L2 tense morphology for an adult native Chinese speaker at a consistently very low rate of suppliance (approximately 34%) in obligatory contexts. Nevertheless, in addition to robust evidence for CP in the grammar, the data also show perfect distribution of pronominal case (100%) in all contexts, suggesting the presence of a TP bearing a fully specified [± finite] feature. Viewed in light of the steady state (in other words, where grammatical development has ‘ended up’), these results indicate that the courses of syntactic and morphological development are independent and that the mapping between them is much less direct than previously supposed. I conclude that it is this mapping itself, in the morphology or PF component, which may be imperfectly acquired, and from which a lack of functional categories or extended phrase structure development may not be inferred.

This article investigates the acquisition of English synthetic compounding by native Spanish and native Chinese speakers. Data are presented which con tradict the claim by Gordon (1985), Clahsen (1991) and Clahsen et al. (1992) that morphological level-ordering is universally, innately available to lan guage learners to guide their acquisition of compounding constraints. Empirical arguments are given which show that compounding, at least, can not be universally subject to the particular inflectional constraints - namely, a restriction on plurals in compounds - imposed by the level-ordering mod els cited in the above acquisition studies. I also present additional experi mental results which demonstrate that L2 learners of English freely violate this restriction, and that such violations reflect particular L1 influence. I suggest an alternative approach to analysing the role of Universal Grammar in the acquisition of compounding which better accounts for both the L1 and L2 English data, by considering 1) the interaction of syntactic principles with lexical derivation; 2) the parametric differences between the L1 and L2; and 3) the language-specific nature of morphological affixation.

Bloom (1981, 1984) linked the existence of specific grammatical constructions – for example, the counterfactual conditional in English – to the development of a labeled cognitive schema specific to counterfactual thought. He claimed that because the Chinese language lacks an equivalent grammatical marker, Chinese speakers do not develop the corresponding cognitive schema and thus process counterfactuals “less naturally” (1981:22) than English speakers. Whereas attempts to replicate Bloom (Au 1983, 1984; Liu 1985) questioned the extent to which such differences exist, this article demonstrates that where differences in counterfactual response patterns clearly do exist, they cannot be attributed to the presence/absence of a linguistic “counterfactual” construction.

INQUIRIES IN LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT: IN HONOR OF LYDIA WHITE. Roumyana Slabakova, Silvina A. Montrul, and Philippe Prevost (Eds.) . Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2006. Pp. vi + 363. $156.00 cloth. As noted by one of the contributors to this Festschrift volume, Lydia White is widely regarded as the ostensible mother of research in SLA from a generative linguistics perspective. This volume consists of an introduction and 14 chapters edited and written by McGill University alumni who have studied with White. The collection covers an impressive range of topics, mostly in generative SLA, in various linguistic domains including phonology, morphosyntax, lexical and formal semantics, the syntax-discourse/pragmatics interface, and language processing. There are also chapters on first language (L1) acquisition, third language acquisition, bilingualism, and language attrition among heritage language speakers.

INPUT AND EVIDENCE: THE RAW MATERIAL OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Susanne E. Carroll. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001. Pp. xviii + 462. $114.00 cloth.The ambitious goal of this book is the exposition of “a truly explanatory theory of SLA” (back cover). Such a theory is bound to be multifaceted and complex, and indeed, Carroll draws from a variety of theoretical frameworks in exploring the relationship between input—or more precisely, the nature of the mechanisms brought to bear in processing language stimuli—and the nature of the language knowledge that (adult) second language (L2) learners ultimately acquire. In other words, a theory of acquisition must be integrated with a theory of speech processing to explain how language stimuli are transformed into abstract mental representations; this book represents Carroll's attempt to construct just such a model.

New for 1990 from Oxford University Press Your Professional Source Humanism in Language Teaching Earl Stevick This highly original study invites readers to radically reassess their understanding of the term humanism in relation to language teaching. REVIEWS Linguistic Theory In Second Language Acquisition by sScHynnand WayneO Ncil(Eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. 443 pp. J Second Language Research Methods Herbert W. Seliger & Elana Shohamy This book provides a clear, comprehensive, and authoritative guide to research methods in second language acquisition and bilingualism. Reviewed by Donna Lardiere Boston University Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing Lyle F. Bachman This book aims to give a conceptual foundation for answering questions regarding the measurement of language abilities. There has been much debate over the past several years5 about the nature of the relationship between Universal Grammar (UG and adult second language acquisition and about whether indeed such a relationship even exists Many second language researchers nve Ugating this relationship have often noted that, as originally formulated UG theory does not concern itself with nor make direct Literature Alan Duff& Alan Maley This innovative resource book offers a wide variety of interesting and practical ideas for using literature in the language class­ room. Grammar Dictation Ruth Wajnryb This book helps teachers to improve their students' understand­ ing and use of grammar. relation tetwccn linguistic theory and second language data would took noting that such a position (which they themselves do not subscribe to) argues that linguistic theory, because ii is a theory of natural language, musl be tested against second language daw to be validated Thus any theory of language would be false .f it failed to account for second language data Second language data can and should be used as evidence for d.sunguish.ng S e e n linguistic iheories, which, of course attnbutes the power of falsificauon to second language data. (p. 5) A ™ > moderate Dosition, they claim, would be to acknowledge mat a theo^o^^gSage could i t be falsified by second language daU if it were not intended to account for anything other than first m Aspects of Language Teaching Henry Widdowson This book provides a critical review of the most prominent issues in language teaching today. For more information, contact your local Oxford representative, or contact Oxford University Pres« ESL Department 200 Madiaon Aveoue New York, NY 10016 279 South Beverly Drive Suite 1129 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 Issues in Applied Linguistics © Regents of the University of California ISSN 1050-4273 Q Vol. 1 NO. I