Learnability and the Acquistion of Extraction in Relative Clauses andWh-Questions

Abstract

Learnability theory is an investigation of the cognitive principles that determine developmental stages and eventual success in language acquistion. The focus of this study is on the learning principles within learnability theory that account for developmental stages in adult second language acquisition. Three learning principles, cumulative development, continuity, and conservatism, predict a complex sequence of development in the acquisition of relative clauses andwh-questions in English. They predict an early no-prep stage, gradual development through two additional stages of greater embeddedness of the extracted noun, stranded before nonstranded prepositional structures, and the likelihood of resumption at early stages. These predictions are confirmed by data from previous studies and are further investigated in this study by means of elicited production data collected from 35 Japanese learners of English and 17 native speakers of English. The data show the expected stages of development and confirm the relevance of learning principles to a comprehensive theory of learnability in second language acquisition (SLA).