The Interpretive Interface in L2 Acquisition: The Process-Result Distinction in English-French Interlanguage Grammars

Abstract

This study documents the sensitivity of English-French interlanguage to the process-result distinction with respect to the licensing of multiple postnominal genitives, despite lack of direct positive or negative evidence for this distinction in the input. This argues that the Universal Grammar (UG)-governed map between syntactic structures and semantic interpretation guides the development of interlanguage grammars. Evidence that interlanguage grammars involve the same type of interface relationships as native grammars provides the strongest argument (to date) that UG fully determines the hypothesis space of the second language (L2) acquirer. Given our current understanding of interface levels in the architecture of grammar (Chomsky (1995)), such a discovery significantly advances the debate on the role of UG in adult L2 acquisition.

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