Case and Tense in the ‘fossilized’ steady state

Abstract

This article reviews recent SLA studies which have methodologically assumed a direct relation between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and the development of functional phrase structure in the syntax. Results from naturalistic production data collected over eight years apart are reported, establishing the ‘fossilization’ of English L2 tense morphology for an adult native Chinese speaker at a consistently very low rate of suppliance (approximately 34%) in obligatory contexts. Nevertheless, in addition to robust evidence for CP in the grammar, the data also show perfect distribution of pronominal case (100%) in all contexts, suggesting the presence of a TP bearing a fully specified [± finite] feature. Viewed in light of the steady state (in other words, where grammatical development has ‘ended up’), these results indicate that the courses of syntactic and morphological development are independent and that the mapping between them is much less direct than previously supposed. I conclude that it is this mapping itself, in the morphology or PF component, which may be imperfectly acquired, and from which a lack of functional categories or extended phrase structure development may not be inferred.