The acquisition of word order in Dutch and German as L1 and L2

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that children acquiring German as their first language have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when constructing a grammar for German. This should explain why children have SOV base order and the rule of verb-fronting from the very beginni...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Interlanguage studies bulletin 1988-06, Vol.4 (1), p.41-65
Main Author: Jordens, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult education
Children
English language learners
First language acquisition
Grammatical clauses
Predicates
Sentences
Verbs
Word order
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Summary:In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that children acquiring German as their first language have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when constructing a grammar for German. This should explain why children have SOV base order and the rule of verb-fronting from the very beginning. In this paper, it is argued that children's OV utterances cannot be related transformationally to VO utterances. Initially, children acquire OV and VO with different sets of verbs. Clahsen and Muysken (1986) also claim that interlanguage rules of adult L2 learners are not definable in linguistic theory. Du Plessis et al. (1987) reply to this in arguing that the interlanguage rules of adults acquiring L2 German word order fall within the range of systems permitted by the Headedness parameter, the Proper Government parameter, and the Adjunction parameter. Therefore, these adult learners should have access to Universal Grammar (UG). It is argued here that it is not necessary to make this assumption. The L2-acquisition data can be easily accounted for within a simple model of L1-structural transfer.
ISSN:0267-6583
0165-9960
1477-0326
DOI:10.1177/026765838800400103