TY - JOUR
T1 - Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Second Language Acquisition of English Relatives and Embedded Wh-Questions
AU - Kang, Hyun Sook
N1 - Funding Information:
I appreciate input from Kiel Christianson, Holger Diessel, and Aaron Smith throughout various stages of this project, and would like to thank Jean Baeg, Monica Hannan, Breanna Norton, Hillary Veitch, and Amy Wolf for their assistance with data collection. I also appreciate the detailed comments from anonymous reviewers, and funding support from the Language Learning Small Research Grant program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - This study examined subject-object asymmetry and developmental sequence in the second language (L2) acquisition of three types of wh-extraction, i.e., English headed relatives, headless relatives, and embedded wh-questions. Sixty-four L1 Korean learners of English completed an elicited imitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. The learners demonstrated a subject advantage in the headed RCs and headless RCs, but an object advantage in the embedded wh-questions, which suggests that they treat embedded wh-questions differently from headed relatives and headless relatives despite the similarities in surface forms. The learners further demonstrated the order of developing headless RCs followed by embedded wh-questions, and subsequently headed RCs, which supports the primacy of headless relatives as a simple nominal in L2 development.
AB - This study examined subject-object asymmetry and developmental sequence in the second language (L2) acquisition of three types of wh-extraction, i.e., English headed relatives, headless relatives, and embedded wh-questions. Sixty-four L1 Korean learners of English completed an elicited imitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. The learners demonstrated a subject advantage in the headed RCs and headless RCs, but an object advantage in the embedded wh-questions, which suggests that they treat embedded wh-questions differently from headed relatives and headless relatives despite the similarities in surface forms. The learners further demonstrated the order of developing headless RCs followed by embedded wh-questions, and subsequently headed RCs, which supports the primacy of headless relatives as a simple nominal in L2 development.
KW - Elicited imitation
KW - Embedded wh-questions
KW - English as a second language
KW - English relative clauses
KW - Korean speakers
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U2 - 10.1007/s10936-015-9410-2
DO - 10.1007/s10936-015-9410-2
M3 - Article
C2 - 26718190
AN - SCOPUS:84952655654
SN - 0090-6905
VL - 45
SP - 1389
EP - 1406
JO - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
IS - 6
ER -