This article investigates the transfer of verb-second syntax (V2) from L1 German and Dutch into L2 English. A comparative learner corpus analysis between L1 German, Dutch and French, and native English writing reveals that the German and Dutch speakers produce distinct patterns of inversion in declarative clauses, indicating the transfer of V2. They produce non-target subject–auxiliary inversion and copula inversion. However, other reflexes of V2 in interrogatives or with sentential negation are not produced. This is analysed as evidence that the German and Dutch learners have mastered the syntax of English but transfer continues to occur at the level of discourse-pragmatics, where L1 preferences for topicalization structures continue to transfer. This is in line with predictions of the Interface Hypothesis in second language acquisition, which assumes that the interfaces of syntax with other modules of the grammar are more difficult to acquire and may continue to show L1 effects even after the narrow syntax has been mastered.
AdgerD. (2003). Core syntax: A minimalist approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2.
BeckM.-L. (1998). L2 acquisition and obligatory head movement: English-speaking learners of German and the local impairment hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 311–348.
3.
BellettiA.BennattiE.SoraceA. (2007). Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 25, 657–689.
4.
BohnackerU. (2006). When Swedes begin to learn German: From V2 to V2. Second Language Research, 22, 443–486.
5.
BohnackerU.RosénC. (2007a). Transferring information-structural patterns from Swedish to German. In BelikovaA.MeroniL.UmedaM. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA) (pp. 27–38). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
6.
BohnackerU.RosénC. (2007b). How to start a declarative V2 clause: Transfer of syntax or information structure in L2 German. In AnderssenM.WestergaardM. (Eds.), Nordlyd: Papers from the Language Acquisition Workshop SCL 2006 (pp. 29–56). Tromsø: CASTL.
7.
BradnerE. (2004). Head-movement in minimalism and V2 as FORCE-marking. In LohnsteinH.TrisslerS. (Eds.), The syntax and semantics of the left periphery (pp. 97–138). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
8.
CorderP. (1967). The significance of learner errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 5, 161–170.
9.
EubankL. (1993). On the transfer of parametric values in L2 development. Language Acquisition, 3, 183–208.
10.
FreyW. (2006). Contrast and movement to the German prefield. In MolnarV.WinklerS. (Eds.), The architecture of focus (pp. 235–264). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
11.
GrangerS.DagneauxE.MeunierF. (2002). The international corpus of learner English. Handbook and CD-ROM. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain.
12.
HenryA.TangneyD. (1999). Functional categories and parameter setting in the second-language acquisition of Irish in early childhood. In DeGraffA. (Ed.), Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony and development (pp. 139–253). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
HulkA. (1991). Parameter setting and the acquisition of word order in L2 French. Second Language Research, 7, 1–34.
14.
JarvisS. (2000). Methodological rigor in the study of transfer: Identifying L1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon. Language Learning, 20, 245–309.
15.
LardiereD. (1998). Dissociating syntax from morphology in a divergent L2 end-state grammar. Second Language Research, 14, 359–375.
16.
LardiereD. (2000). Mapping features to forms in second language acquisition. In ArchibaldJ. (Ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory (pp. 102–129). Oxford: Blackwell.
17.
LevinB.Rappaport-HovavM. (1995). Unaccusativity at the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
18.
LozanoC.MendikoetxeaA. (2009). L2 syntax meets information structure: Word order at the interfaces. In ChandleeJ.FranchiniM.LordS.RheinerM. (Eds.), BUCLD 33: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 1, pp. 313–324) Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
19.
MontrulS. (2000). Transitivity alternations in L2 acquisition: Toward a modular view of transfer. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 229–273.
20.
MontrulS.SlabakovaR. (2003). Competence similarities between native and near-native speakers: An investigation of the preterite/imperfect contrast in Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 351–398.
21.
PrévostP.WhiteL. (2000). Accounting for morphological variation in L2 acquisition: Truncation or missing inflection? In FriedmannM-A.RizziL. (Eds.), The acquisition of syntax (pp. 202–235). London: Longman.
22.
RamchandG.ReissC. (Eds.) (2007). The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
RaysonP. (2008). Wmatrix: A web-based corpus processing environment, Computing Department, Lancaster University. Retrieved from http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix
24.
RizziL. (1996). Residual verb second and the wh criterion. In BellettiA.RizziL. (Eds.), Parameters and functional heads (pp. 63–90). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25.
RobertsonD.SoraceA. (1999). Losing the V2 constraint. In KleinE.MartohardjonoG. (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 317–361). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
26.
RothmanJ. (2009). Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences? L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 951–973.
27.
SchachterJ. (1974). An error in error analysis. Language Learning, 24, 205–214.
28.
SchwartzB.SprouseR. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model. Second Language Research, 12, 40–72.
29.
SchwartzB.ViknerS. (1996). The verb always leaves IP in V2 clauses. In: BellettiA.RizziL. (Eds.), Parameters and functional heads (pp. 11–62). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
30.
SoraceA. (1993). Incomplete and divergent representations of unaccusativity in non-native grammars of Italian. Second Language Research, 9, 22–48.
31.
SoraceA. (2005). Selective optionality in language development. In CornipsL.CorriganK. (Eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social (pp. 55–80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
32.
SoraceA. (2006). Gradedness and optionality in mature and developing grammars. In FanselowG.FeryC.VogelR.SchlesewksyM. (Eds.), Gradience in grammar: Generative perspectives (pp. 106–123). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
33.
SoraceA. (2009, June). Pinning down the concept of interface. Keynote lecture at the Workshop on Interfaces in L2A, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal.
34.
SoraceA.FiliaciF. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22, 339–368.
35.
VainikkaA.Young-ScholtenM. (1996). Gradual development of L2 phrase structure. Second Language Research, 12, 7–39.
36.
WestergaardM. (2003). Unlearning V2: Transfer, markedness and the importance of input cues in the acquisition of word order in English by Norwegian children. In Foster-CohenS.Pekarek-DoehlerS. (Eds.), EUROSLA yearbook (Vol. 3, pp. 77–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
37.
WestergaardM. (2007). English as a mixed V2 grammar: Synchronic word order inconsistencies from the perspective of first language acquisition. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 43, 107–131.
38.
WestergaardM.VangsnesØ. (2005). Wh-questions, V2 and the left periphery of three Norwegian dialect types. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 8, 117–158.
39.
WhiteL. (1990). The verb-movement parameter in second language acquisition. Language Acquisition, 1, 337–360.
40.
WhiteL. (1992). Long and short verb movement in second language acquisition. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 37, 273–299.
