Reports the results of an interpretive task showing that both native speakers of French and English-speaking classroom learners of French exhibit knowledge of the event sensitivity associated with quantification at a distance. Argues that such knowledge seems reliably acquirable only if both first language and second language acquisition are…

Presents the results of an empirical study of the interpretation of left branch "combien" (how many) extractions in English-French interlanguage. Results show that knowledge of the interpretation of left-branch "combien" extraction is detectable in English-French interlanguage. (Author/VWL)

Argues that the null preposition phenomenon is a special case of reliance on the A-bar binding strategy, examining research on English-French interlanguage in college classrooms and suggesting that apparent categorical mismatches in A-bar chains may result from preposition incorporation. Second-language learners can appeal to the A-bar binding…

Addresses the issue of second language (L2) epistemology assuming Chomsky's (1995) discussion of the place of universal grammar in mental design. Discusses interaction of adjectival restriction in interrogative expressions, contrasts plausibility of nativist and non-nativist approaches to the etiology of such grammatical knowledge, an reports…

This study documents the sensitivity of English-French interlanguage to the process-result distinction with respect to the licensing of multiple postnominal genitives, despite a lack of direct positive or negative evidence for this distinction in the input. Documentation argues that the Universal Grammar-governed map between syntactic structures…

Defends the full transfer/full access (FT/FA) model, which hypothesizes that the initial state of second-language (L2) acquisition is the final state of L1 acquisition (full transfer) and failure to assign a representation to input data will force subsequent restructuring. The article considers two other competing hypotheses as well as several…