On adult accessibility to universal grammar in second language (L2) acquisition: Some evidence from the L2 acquisition of Spanish.

摘要

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) is as vast as it is diverse. Nonetheless, the ultimate goal of all SLA researchers is one and the same; explaining how the process of adult second language (L2) acquisition occurs. This present research is undertaken from the generative paradigm of language acquisition. The dissertation is primarily concerned with providing empirical evidence in favor or against adult L2 accessibility to UG.; The empirical research of this dissertation entails a study designed to test English native L2 learners of Spanish as to their ability to re-set the null-subject parameter and the status of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) in their L2 grammars. In both cases, adult L2 ability to achieve a native type grammar given these grammatical properties should implicate access to UG. However, L2 instantiation of the OPC, true poverty of the stimulus knowledge, will provide unassailable evidence. This study examines longitudinally the interlanguage grammatical development of college L2 learners of Spanish (intermediate level) enrolled in the Universidad de Madrid through the University of California education abroad program for one academic year of study abroad. The profile of the intermediate level participants in the study is as homogeneous as possible given real world limitations and discussed in detail herein.; The metalinguistic judgment/performance tasks include two different tests for each syntactic property under investigation: two for the re-setting of the null-subject parameter and two for the OPC tested as a separate variable. For each syntactic feature there is one judgment task and one production task.; The data indicate, at the group level, the ability to reset the pro-drop parameter and the instantiation of the OPC in general. However, the individual results indicate that, by the end of the study, a significant number of L2 learners in this population (roughly 26%) have not re-set the null-subject parameter and thus, not surprisingly, do not have the OPC instantiated into their L2 grammars. Since overall proficiency (determined separately) is not a good indicator of which L2 learners have re-set the parameter, the Variable Access Hypothesis is offered to account for these facts.