Second Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory in the 21st Century

What is it about?

Syntactic theory has played a role in second language acquisition research since the early eighties, when the principles and parameters model of generative grammar was implemented. However, it was the so-called functional parameterization hypothesis together with the debate on whether second language learners activated new features or switched their value that led to detailed and in-depth analyses of the syntactic properties of many different nonnative grammars. In the last ten years, with the Minimalist Program as background, these analyses have diverted more and more from looking at those syntactic properties that argued for or against the various versions of the UG-access / non UG-access debate and have more recently delved into the status of nonnative grammars in the cognitive science field. Thus, using features (i.e., Gender, Case, V and D) as the basic units and paying special attention to the quality of input as well as to processing principles and constraints, nonnative grammars have been compared to the language contact paradigms which underlie subsequent bilingualism, child second language acquisition, creole formation and diachronic change. Taking Chomsky’s I-language / E-language construct as the framework, this paper will provide a review of these recent developments in second language acquisition research.

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