A generative approach to language acquisition is no different from any other in assuming that target language input is crucial for language acquisition. This discussion note addresses the place of input in generative second language acquisition (SLA) research and the perception in the wider field of SLA research that generative SLA ‘ignores’ the input. This impression may have arisen because generative SLA researchers have tended not to systematically study quantitative distribution of input properties, nor qualitative properties of the input available to learners. We argue that precisely these sorts of studies would be at least beneficial, if not indispensable, to the development of a comprehensive (generative) theory of SLA. Furthermore, a welcome side-effect of more systematic engagement with input would be potential for greater accessibility for generative SLA in the wider field of second language (L2) studies.

This article reports on a study investigating the relative influence of the first language and dominant language (L1) on second language (L2) and third language (L3) morpho-lexical processing. A lexical decision task compared the responses to English NV-er compounds (e.g. taxi driver) and non-compounds provided by a group of native speakers and three groups of learners at various levels of English proficiency: L1 Spanish – L2 English sequential bilinguals and two groups of early Spanish–Basque bilinguals with English as their L3. Crucially, the two trilingual groups differed in their first and dominant language (i.e. L1 Spanish – L2 Basque vs. L1 Basque – L2 Spanish). Our materials exploit an (a)symmetry between these languages: while Basque and English pattern together in the basic structure of (productive) NV-er compounds, Spanish presents a construction that differs in directionality as well as inflection of the verbal element (V[3SG] + N). Results show between and within group differences in accuracy and response times that may be ascribable to two factors besides proficiency: the number of languages spoken by a given participant and their dominant language. An examination of response bias reveals an influence of the participants’ first and dominant language on the processing of NV-er compounds. Our data suggest that morphological information in the non-native lexicon may extend beyond morphemic structure and that, similarly to bilingualism, there are costs to sequential multilingualism in lexical retrieval.

In the present study we aimed to investigate phonological substitution errors made by hearing second language (M2L2) learners of American Sign Language (ASL) during a sentence translation task. Learners saw sentences in ASL that were signed by either a native signer or a M2L2 learner. Learners were to simply translate the sentence from ASL to English. Learners’ responses were analysed for lexical translation errors that were caused by phonological parameter substitutions. Unlike previous related studies, tracking phonological substitution errors during sentence translation allows for the characterization of uncontrolled and naturalistic perception errors. Results indicated that learners made mostly movement errors followed by handshape and location errors. Learners made more movement errors for sentences signed by the M2L2 learner relative to those by the native signer. Additionally, high proficiency learners made more handshape errors than low proficiency learners. Taken together, this pattern of results suggests that late M2L2 learners are poor at perceiving the movement parameter and M2L2 production variability of the movement parameter negatively contributes to perception.

This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese shì … de cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity ranking task were administered to learners with intermediate and advanced Chinese proficiency ( n = 76). The results reveal an initial mapping between the target Chinese structure and the English it-cleft construction. The relevant tense, telicity and discourse features are added in an uneven feature-by-feature manner in the subsequent feature reassembly. It is proposed that feature reassembly tasks involving cross-domain operations (e.g. from prosody to syntax) are more complicated and more difficult to accomplish than those taking place within the same linguistic domain.

This study investigates the role of previously acquired linguistic systems, Mazandarani and Persian, in the acquisition of third language (L3) English at the initial stages. The data have been obtained from 31 students (age 13–14 years), testing the placement of attributive possessives in a grammaticality judgment task, an element rearrangement task and an elicited oral imitation task. The participants consist of three groups: The first two groups have Mazandarani as the first language (L1) and Persian as the second language (L2), but differ from each other with respect to the language of communication, Mazandarani and Persian, respectively. The third group has Persian as the L1 and Mazandarani as the L2, with Persian as the language of communication. English and Mazandarani pattern similarly in the target structures. That is to say, possessors precede possessed nouns and possessive adjectives come before nouns. In contrast, in Persian, possessives occur post-nominally. The results of this study reveal that none of the proposals tested (e.g. the L1 Factor, Hermas, 2010, 2014a, 2014b; the L2 Status Factor, Bardel and Falk, 2007; Falk and Bardel, 2011; the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM), Flynn et al., 2004; the Typological Proximity Model (TPM), Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015) could account for the results obtained. This study provides support that at the initial stages of L3 acquisition, syntactic transfer originates from the language of communication, irrespective of order of acquisition.

This study investigated the effect of first language (L1) on the reading of modifier–head case agreement in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Russian is similar to Finnish in that both languages use case endings to mark grammatical roles, whereas such markings are absent in Chinese. The critical nouns were embedded in sentences, where the head noun was either preceded by an agreeing modifier or the modifier was absent. Readers’ eye fixation patterns were used as indices of online processing. Both natives and non-natives showed a facilitatory effect of agreement; reading head nouns was easier when they were preceded by an agreeing modifier. Typological distance in terms of the structural complexity of words between L1 and L2 did not influence the processing.

Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers’ second language (L2) acquisition of English wh-on-earth questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or who on earth). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion task and an interpretation task were used in the study, and the results indicate that in Chinese speakers’ L2 English, the form of wh-on-earth can be learned and stored in a native-like manner, but without being endowed with fully elaborated features. A distinction between active features and dormant features in L2 lexicon is made in the analysis, and it is argued that features transferred from learners’ L1 to their L2 are likely to lose their vigour and vitality in their L2 lexicon and become dormant if there is no evidence in the target language input to confirm or disconfirm them. A typical consequence of a dormant feature is random behaviours of a related structure in L2 learners’ production and interpretation. The results of the study show that semantic features, discourse features as well as morphosyntactic features can become dormant in L2 lexicon.

This article reviews studies in second language classroom research from a cross-theoretic perspective, arguing that the classroom holds the potential for bringing together researchers from opposing theoretical orientations. It shows how generative and general cognitive approaches share a view of language that implicates both implicit and explicit knowledge, and that holds a bias towards implicit knowledge. Arguing that it is implicit knowledge that should be the object of research, it proposes that classroom research would benefit from incorporating insights from a generative understanding of language. Specifically, there is a need for a more nuanced view of the complexity of language in terms of linguistic domain, and the interaction between those domains. Generative second language acquisition research that shows developmental differences in terms of both linguistic domain and interface is reviewed. The core argument is a call for more attention to the ‘what’ of language development in classroom research and, by implication, teaching practice. As such, the language classroom is seen to offer potential for research that goes beyond paradigm to address both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of language development.

Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends on the first language (L1) prosodic structure and, if so, how. We tested participants from a stress language (German), a language without word stress (French), a language with restricted lexical tonal contrasts (Japanese), and Mandarin Chinese controls. Furthermore, German has a rich intonational structure, while French and Japanese dispose of fewer utterance-level pitch contrasts. The participants learnt associations between disyllabic non-words (4 tonal contrasts) and objects and indicated whether picture–word pairs matched with what they had learnt (complete match, segmental or tonal mismatch conditions). In the tonal mismatch condition, the Mandarin Chinese controls had the highest sensitivity, followed by the German participants. The French and Japanese participants showed no sensitivity towards these tonal contrasts. Utterance-level prosody is hence better able to predict success in second language (L2) tone learning than word prosody.

This paper presents an extension of the Multiple Grammars Theory (Roeper, 1999) to provide a formal mechanism that can serve as a generative-based alternative to current descriptive models of interlanguage. The theory extends historical work by Kroch and Taylor (1997), and has been taken into a computational direction by Yang (2003). The proposal is based on the idea that any human grammar readily accommodates sets of rules in sub-grammars that can seem (apparently) contradictory. We discuss the rationale behind this proposal and establish a dialogue with recent research in SLA, multilingualism, L3 acquisition, and L2 processing. We compare the Multiple Grammars explanation to optionality in L2 to other current proposals, and provide experimental results that can demonstrate the existence of active sub-grammars in the linguistic representation of L2 speakers.