The Production of Yes/No Questions, Wh-Questions, and Embedded Clauses as Functional Categories at the Initial Stage of Child L2 Acquisition

Abstract

This is a longitudinal case study of two Farsi-speaking children learning English: ‘Bernard’ and ‘Melissa’, who were 7;4 and 8;4 at the start of data collection. The research deals with the presence or absence of functional categories (CP),in our case Yes/no questions, Wh-questions, and embedded clauses as well as their production rate in early stages of interlanguage development of the child second language (L2) acquisition of syntax. Some studies in the field of child second language acquisition regarding the production of functional categories (CP) are discussed. Examining data collected from the children’s spontaneous speech, the researcher’s diaries and translation and other tasks over a period of 20 months, the competing claims of the two most prominent hypotheses about early L2 grammars are tested: Vainikka& Young-Scholten’s (1996) Minimal Trees/Structure Building hypothesis and Schwartz & Sprouse’s (1996). Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis. The conclusion is reached that Yes/no questions, Wh-questions, and embedded clauses as three functional categories are absent in early stages of interlanguage development of the child L2acquisition.Keywords: Functional categories, Child L2 acquisition, Minimal Trees/Structure Building hypothesis, Full transfer/fullaccess hypothesis, Yes/no questions and Wh-questions, Embedded clauses

Syntactical Development on Second Language Writing: A Case of L2 Child Learner on Immersion Experience Abroad

“…They conclude that infinitival and participial relative clauses constructions emerged at early stages in the child's English L2 acquisition. Meanwhile, a quite different result has been reported by Mobaraki & Saed (2016) who summarize that the functional category, such as questions and embedded clauses, is not present at the initial stages of L2 acquisition and emerges after the learners have mastered inflectional phrases (IP) in their grammars.…”

“…At first, Krashen (1982 cited by Paradis, 2008) show that order sequence of morpheme acquisition is similar to that found in L1 English: for example, early-acquired morphemes in English L2 are progressive [-ing] and plural [-s]; late-acquired morphemes are past tense [-ed] and third person singular [-s] (Paradis, 2008). Moreover, clausal level of acquisition has been deeply explored by Mobaraki & Saed (2016) and Yamaguchi & Kawaguchi (2016). Mobaraki and Saed (2016) concluded that functional categories, such as Yes/No Questions, WH-questions, and embedded clauses, are not emerged in early stages of interlanguage development of the child L2 acquisition.…”

“…Moreover, clausal level of acquisition has been deeply explored by Mobaraki & Saed (2016) and Yamaguchi & Kawaguchi (2016). Mobaraki and Saed (2016) concluded that functional categories, such as Yes/No Questions, WH-questions, and embedded clauses, are not emerged in early stages of interlanguage development of the child L2 acquisition. Meanwhile, Yamaguchi and Kawaguchi (2016) reported that some types of relative clause constructions emerge at earlier stages in L2 English acquisition, particularly in the Japanese child's English L2 develop in the similar way to those reported in L1 studies.…”

“…Listening comprehension test and vocabulary test were used by Kulundary & Gabriele (2012) and Pili-Moss (2017) to find out L2 syntactic development and L2 morpho-syntactical development respectively. On the other hand, Fitriani (2019) preferred the daily notes and recordings to collect data of spoken utterances in natural setting; while, longitudinal oral production using audio recordings was gained by Mobaraki & Saed (2016) to figure out the functional categories among two Farsi-speaking children during their settlement in the UK. Then, Yamaguchi & Kawaguchi (2016) also used regular audio-recordings to take the Japanese child's spontaneous speech in English particularly in relative clause constructions.…”