Age Effects on the Acquisition of Uninterpretable Features by Proficient Saudi Arabic Speakers of English
Kholoud A Al-Thubaiti · 2007
A recent account of fossilization in adult second language (L2) grammars is the ‘Interpretability Hypothesis’ (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). It proposes that properties associated with uninterpretable features not already activated in the first language (L1) grammar will pose a learnability problem for older L2 speakers because they are inaccessible beyond a critical period (CP). The present study tests this hypothesis by examining the effect of age on the knowledge shown by proficient Saudi Arabic speakers of L2 English of two subtle linguistic properties associated with uninterpretable features: (i) the Gap Strategy in