This study examines the syntax of DP deletion and pragmatics of DP movement in passive voice from applied linguistics methodology. The data collection was a purposive sampling method as the study specifically alternated the data from Q1 SCOPUS publications, Thai national publications (TCI 1), and Thai undergraduate students' independent studies…

Saussure proposed the division language/parole and argued that language can be studied as a formal system. Fifty years later Chomsky declared competence the core interest of linguistics. Although for years Generative second language acquisition (GenSLA) has adopted this view, a number of recent publications poke holes into the competence bubble.…

This article has two main goals. The first is to summarize and comment on the current state of affairs of generative approaches to SLA (GenSLA), 35 years into its history. This discussion brings the readership of SSLA up to date on the questions driving GenSLA agendas and clears up misconceptions about what GenSLA does and does not endeavor to…

The syntactic complexities of English sentence structures induced the Indonesian students' sentence-level accuracies blurred. Reciprocally, the meanings conveyed are left hanging. The readers are increasingly at sixes and sevens. The Sentence Crimes were, therefore, the major essences of diagnosing the students' sentence-level inaccuracies in this…

This article proposes a formal model of the human language faculty that accommodates the possibility of 'attrition' (modification or loss) of morphosyntactic properties in a first language. Modeling L1 grammatical attrition entails a quite fundamental paradox: if the structure of the language faculty in principle allows for attrition of…

The extensive literature on subject expression in Spanish makes for rich comparisons between generative (formal) and usage-based (functional) approaches to language acquisition. This article explores how the problem of subject expression has been conceptualized within each research tradition, as well as unanswered questions that both approaches…

We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ("give the book to library"/"give the library the book"), while excluding negative exceptions ("donate the…

Deaf Learners' Acquisition of fundamental lexical properties of high-frequency English verbs related to transitivity and intransitivity was examined, including the subtle distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs. A 140-item sentence acceptability rating scale was used to assess this lexical knowledge in deaf college students at two…

Lardiere's keynote article adverts to a succession of "units of comparison" that have been employed in the study of cross-linguistic differences, including mid-twentieth-century structural patterns, generative grammar's parameters, and (within contemporary Minimalism) features. This commentary expands on the idea of units of cross-linguistic…

In an attempt to explain first language attrition in emigrant populations, this paper investigates the explanatory power of a framework that has--until now--received little attention: the regression hypothesis (Jakobson, 1941). This hypothesis predicts that the order of attrition is the reverse of the order of acquisition. The regression…

Defends the idea that language is a unique, genetically underwritten "module of the mind" and considers consequences such a stance holds for the psycholinguistic study of nonnative language acquisition. Supports the position that language, as conceived within the tradition of generative grammar, is unlike other types of cognition and its basis is…

Recommends the "distributional" and transformational grammar approach as especially suitable for developing a teaching grammar for dealing with the French simple infinitive and infinitive with "de". (IFS/WGA)

Second language learners must acquire a generative system of grammar. There is, as yet, no way of describing notions in generative terms. Long-term syllabuses will have to continue to be syntactically based, but the incorporation of notions from a checklist is acceptable. (Author/JB)

Discusses the motivation for Universal Grammar (UG), as assumed in the principles and parameters framework of generative grammar (Chomsky, 1981), focusing on the logical problem of first-language acquisition and the potential role of UG in second-language acquisition. Recent experimental research regarding the second-language status of the…

Reviews recent trends in generative research on second language acquisition, focusing on the role of universal grammar, parameter resetting, and anaphoric binding. An annotated bibliography discusses five important works in the field. (61 references) (MDM)