The acquisition of morphosyntax in child L2 English evidence from Turkish learners

Abstract

This thesis investigates the early development of English as a second language(L2) by three Turkish children over a period of seven months, focusing on the availability of the functional categories both within the nominal and the verbal domain. The sample consisted of three Turkish children, aged 4; 11, 4; 6 and 4; 7, acquiring English as an L2 at an international school in Istanbul, Turkey. Data obtained were analyzed on the basis of inflectional morphology and determiner phrase within the generative perspective. The utterances of the subjects were audiotaped on average at least three times a month and they were accompanied by the detailed notes of the investigator. The data were transcribed, and analyzed according to the morphosyntactic coding conventions utilized in the CHILDES coding system.The results of the analyses showed that both verbal and nominal functional categories are fully available and there is no optional infinitive stage. Moreover, whatdetermines the optionality of verbal inflection is not the lack of underlying syntacticstructure but rather missing surface inflections.Specifically within the determiner phrase the learners̕ errors in the use of English articles (a (n)/the) and possessives, child learners manifest errors of omission rather than errors of substitution. In addition, they mark "the" better than "a". Finally,the learners in this study do not fluctuate in their choice of articles; rather it appears tobe a prosodic problem. Overall, our data support the Prosodic Constraints and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypotheses in the L2 acquisition literature.