This study contributes to a central debate within contemporary generative second language (L2) theorizing: the extent to which adult learners are (un)able to acquire new functional features that result in a L2 grammar that is mentally structured like the native target (see White, 2003). The adult acquisition of L2 nominal phi-features is explored, with focus on the syntactic and semantic reflexes in the related domain of adjective placement in two experimental groups: English-speaking intermediate (n= 21) and advanced (n= 24) learners of Spanish, as compared to a native-speaker control group (n= 15). Results show that, on some of the tasks, the intermediate L2 learners appear to have acquired the syntactic properties of the Spanish determiner phrase but, on other tasks, to show some delay with the semantic reflexes of prenominal and postnominal adjectives. Crucially, however, our data demonstrate full convergence by all advanced learners and thus provide evidence in contra the predictions of representational deficit accounts (e.g., Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Hawkins & Franceschina, 2004; Hawkins & Hattori, 2006).

This article serves as a state-of the-science review of the blossoming field of generative third language (L3) acquisition as well as an introduction to this special issue on the same topic. We present and argue for the relevance of adult L3/L n acquisition for many perennial questions that have sat at the core of linguistic approaches to adult language acquisition since the Principles and Parameters framework was first adopted into second language acquisition (SLA; e.g. Flynn, 1985, 1987; Liceras, 1985; White, 1985a, 1985b; Schwartz, 1986). Furthermore, we highlight the unique, specific questions that have emerged from studying L3/L n from a generative perspective thus far while suggesting refinements to these questions and additional ones that should emerge in future inquiry.

A project of this nature and size involves the cooperation of many people to whom we are indebted and owe much gratitude. We wish to thank all the children and their parents for their enthusiasm and participation over the years; it was a pleasure to see your development and growth-much more than just in your language. To the teachers and especially the administration at the Colegio Berchmans, we cannot thank you enough. Finally and most notably, a very large thank you to Eliana Herrera Laguna, the director of bilingual education at Colegio Berchmans, whose love for these children and belief in using scientific research to support bilingual education are inspiring. This article is for all of you. We are also very grateful for the funding for this project, which came over the years from the University of Iowa, the University of Florida and the University of Reading. Many research assistants over the course of the 5 years of the project contributed to the processing of the data, specifically the transcripts of the interviews at the outset of the project and we are of course thankful for their help. Many colleagues have offered helpful advice and comments as we have presented the various stages of the data collection at conferences over the years; we thank them all, but wish to point out that conversations with Ianthi Tsimpli, Roumyana Slabakova, Loes Koring, and Nina Hyams proved especially helpful at various stages. Any and all errors are inadvertent and completely our own. AbstractWe report a longitudinal comprehension study of (long) passive constructions in two native-Spanish child groups differing by age of initial exposure to L2 English (young group: 3;0-4;0 years; older group: 6;0-7;0 years); where amount of input, L2 exposure environment, and socio-economic status are controlled. Data from a forced-choice task show that both groups comprehend active sentences, not passives, initially (after 3.6 years of exposure). One year later, both groups improve, but only the older group reaches ceiling on both actives and passives. Two years from initial testing, the younger group catches up. Input alone cannot explain why the younger group takes 5years to accomplish what the older group does in 4. We claim that some properties take longer to acquire at certain ages because language development is partially constrained by general cognitive and linguistic development (e.g. de

Assuming transfer of the L1 grammar, in the present study the question of whether all parameters can be reset even with access to UG is examined in light of the subset/superset relationship. Specifically, the resetting of the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) in L2 learners of English (L1 Spanish) is investigated by means of examining the application of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (Montalbetti 1984), a property that clusters with the null subject setting only, as well as acceptance/rejection of null subjects in English. Since English does not syntactically license empty subjects, but Spanish does, the two languages are in a subset/superset relationship such that Spanish is the superset grammar. Therefore, the results stand to shed light on the validity of the Subset Principle (Berwick 1982;Manzini and Wexler 1987;Wexler and Manzini 1987) and its learnability constraints applied to second language acquisition (SLA) where transfer might impede convergence on the narrow syntactic property despite full access to Universal Grammar.

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