THE SELECTIVE AVAILABILITY OF UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A SPECIFIER‐HEAD/HEAD‐COMPLEMENT DEVELOPMENTAL ASYMMETRY1
Roger Hawkins · Transactions of the Philological Society · 1993
Abstract Beyond the age of around seven, second language learners typically fail to acquire certain grammatical properties of the target language. This is in contrast to first language learners who are typically fully successful in acquiring grammatical properties of the target language. A recent approach to this problem suggests that the failure in second language acquisition results from specifiable subcomponents of Universal Grammar becoming inaccessible to second language learners, while Universal Grammar nevertheless continues in general to constrain the construction of L2 grammars. In this article it is suggested that specifier‐head agreement is a property which appears to be particularly difficult for second language learners to access, if it is not already instantiated in the LI. Three cases from the acquisition of French as a second language are considered from this perspective; an alternation between the complementisers à and de, quantification at a distance, and object pro.