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In this article we examine the development of the complementizer system in child L2 grammars of English, and we show that C and its maximal projection CP are operative from the very beginning. Next, we focus on the development of the tensed complementizer that. We provide evidence which suggests that the tensed complementizer in embedded declaratives may be treated as an obligatorily null complementizer by these child L2 learners. We then examine restrictive relative clauses produced by our subjects. The evidence indicates that the tensed complementizer is first realized overtly as that in the relative clause domain. We speculate on the possible reasons as to why the relative clause domain should trigger the emergence of the overt tensed complementizer and we argue that recent proposals by Rizzi (1990) for a typology of complementizer types enable us to account for these child L2 developmental facts.

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In this article, we address the important issue of 'how we know what learners know' based on evidence from second language (L2) learners' spontaneous speech samples gathered longitudinally. We first examine some of the problems involved in the analysis of spontaneous speech, with focus on L2 studies within the generative framework. Next, we revisit the issue of the comparative fallacy in L2 research. We first consider the effects of the comparative fallacy in relation to analyses of interlanguage with a target language bias. Next, we extend the comparative fallacy to include interlanguage analysis where the bias is towards the native language. We argue that the comparative fallacy in interlanguage studies, regardless of the nature of the bias (i.e., target language or native language) can lead to the underestimation and/or overestimation of the learners' linguistic competence. © Arnold 20010267-6583(01)SR191OA