Knowledge of syntax and verbal morphology in adolescent L2 English

A Feature Reassembly account

Abstract

This study investigates knowledge of both syntax and verbal morphology by L2 English classroom learners with L1 Japanese in affirmative sentences with VP-adverbs (e.g., She usually eats breakfast at nine2). It proposes that the findings are consistent with the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009) which the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis underlies3. Results are obtained from an elicited production task: for written data with 90 junior high school students (12-15 years old) and 30 university students (19-20 years old), as well as for spoken data with 12 junior high school students (12-13 years old). It is observed that the pattern of use of verb forms is different from that found in other L2 English studies. The key differences are: (1) high omission of copula is in copula is+adverb contexts; (2) two kinds of commission error where tense/aspect forms replace each other. It is argued that such variability in verbal morphology could be accounted for by the differences in the processes and conditions by which relevant morphosyntactic and semantic features are assembled between L1 and L2, which is consistent with the key claim of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis.