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Evidence for a ‘Wild’ L2 Grammar: When PPs Rear their Empty Heads
City University of New York
Researchers in second language acquisition have argued for a constraint against ‘wild grammars’ This mandates that each stage in a learner's interim grammar correspond to a natural language system, predicting that errors outside of UG will never occur This paper provides counter-evidence to such generally accepted claims An illicit L2 grammar appears in data from several studies which show that L2 learners who have subcategonzation knowledge of verbs for their prepositions often omit those same propositions in relative clauses and questions requiring pied-piping or preposition stranding An analysis of this ‘null-prep’ phenomenon in adult natural languages shows that it is found in some languages of the world, but is severely constrained by UG As a natural language phenomenon, null-prep is restricted to non-movement relative clauses and is prohibited from occurring in interrogative constructions From such linguistic and acquisition data, it is shown that the occurrence of null-prep in L2 questions, particularly, represents a wild interlanguage grammar, not sanctioned by UG principles Considering this evidence and the acquisition problem, the author argues for a relaxation of the constraints on non-conformist grammars in the developing L2 without negating the role of UG in second language acquisition
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  T. I. Kaplan and L. Selinker Book Review: Toward second language acquisition: a study of null-prep Second Language Research, April 1, 1997; 13(2): 170 - 186. [PDF]
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