Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Evidence for The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis or Not? |
| Author: | Alyona Belikova |
| Institution: | McGill University |
| Author: | Lydia White |
| Institution: | McGill University |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition |
| Abstract: | This article examines how changes in linguistic theory affect the debate between the fundamental difference hypothesis and the access-to-Universal Grammar (UG) approach to SLA. With a focus on subjacency (Chomsky, 1973), a principle of UG that places constraints on wh-movement and that has frequently been taken as a test case for verifying second language (L2) access to UG, we reanalyze earlier L2 findings in terms of a revised constraint, which effectively prohibits extraction out of subjects and adjuncts. We show that L2 learners indeed observe such a constraint on wh-movement, and, at the same time, we suggest that recent claims for a universal computational system (e.g., Chomsky, ; Uriagereka, ) make the respective roles of the first language and UG difficult to tease apart. |
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This article appears in Studies in Second Language Acquisition Vol. 31, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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