The main purpose of this thesis is to argue that "Universal Grammar" (Chomsky 1981, 1982, 1986a, 1986b, 1989, 1992a, 1992b) works defectively in adult second language (L2) acquisition. A cross-sectional research was attempted to investigate whether or not adult L2 subjects would be able to reset the "prodrop parameter" (Chomsky 1981; Jaeggli 1982; Rizzi 1982).;Two languages were contrasted with one another regarding the prodrop parameter. Japanese was claimed to be a (+prodrop) language in contrast with English as a (;Two sets of the three tests, a pretest, an acceptability judgment test, and a pronoun-deletion test, were independently designed for two groups of experimental subjects: 122 adult native speakers of English learning Japanese as a L2 (JSL) and 42 adult native speakers of Japanese learning English as a L2 (ESL). JSL subjects' ability to reset the prodrop parameter was tested, while ESL subjects' dependency on overgeneralization regarding ellipsis of subjects in coordinate clauses was tested. After screening, test scores of 85 JSL and 42 ESL subjects were statistically analyzed in comparison with those of 69 and 52 control subjects respectively. Their responses to each question were also analyzed.;Evidence for our claim comes from the following results: (i) JSL subjects failed to reset the prodrop parameter, (ii) their L2 proficiency did not (strongly) correlate with their success in the parameter resetting, (iii) ESL subjects showed two types of overgeneralization. Regarding (iii), it was unexpected that advanced and less advanced subjects would show different types of overgeneralization.
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