A Study On The Acquisition Of The Simple WH-Questions In English As A Second Language From The View Of Optimality Theory

Within the framework of Optimality Theory, through a grammar test on different types of the simple WH-questions in English, we collect the data of interlanguage produced by the junior middle school students whose native language is Chinese, and investigate the constraint hierarchy of the interlanguage of the simple WH-questions in English produced by native Chinese.The conclusions are: The constraint hierarchy of interlanguage is partially determined. For the undetermined part, second language learners have different choices, which lead to different output. So second language learners have a "Partial Gradual Learning Algorithm". During the acquisition of the simple WH-questions in English, native Chinese have difficulty in ranking three constraints: O_B-H_D, Full-Int and Stay. But the degrees of the difficulty are different for the different types of the simple WH-questions.