| The present study sets out to reveal certain features of the initial state of Ll-Chinese L2-English learners' mind. Specifically, Chinese-speaking learners never accept such LI-allowed CP clauses as "*This child, head is big", "*She the meal has prepared", "Apple I like", "* Vegetables I hate pepper", "?î–¯ he did not come", even if some of the underlined beyond-IP NPs are marginally acceptable in English. Moreover, the acquisition of L2-specific, functional CP projections such as wh-fronting appears effortless and concurrent with the unlearning of the LI-specific in-situ wh-constructions. A study of such spontaneous LI unlearning and L2 acquisition of some linguistic constructions would undoubtedly contribute to our understanding of human language faculty.To approach the above research issue, the present study begins with a comparison of different nominal constructions at matrix Spec-CP and adjunct Spec-CP in Chinese and English within the framework of generative grammar. The comparison yields the finding that any NP beyond IP retains its Case covertly, and the sense of Case obtainsin either the LI or the L2 learner's mind. Thus, the differences in nominal constructions beyond IP between English and Chinese are not all that complicated as has hitherto been thought of, and can be summarized in the following three aspects:a) In Chinese, an NP beyond IP can carry the nominative Case, because the subject position and the nominative Case can be split in a Chinese sentence. In English, this splitting is illegal.b) In Chinese, an NP beyond IP can carry the oblique Case, which is in essence a head-dropped PP. hi English, the head cannot be dropped.c) The in-situ wh-construction is allowed in Chinese but disallowed in English (except in echo-questions) due to the English-specific auxiliary inversion. When auxiliary inversion occurs, the word order of the whole question will be distorted, leaving no freedom for the wh-word to select its position.We then turn to the identification of the learning issues involved. According to Radford (1996), child LI acquisition goes through three stages: the VP-stage, the IP-stage, and the CP-stage. Early child LI-clauses have no functional architecture, thus lacking IP and CP projections. But L2 learners begin their classroom acquisition by learning the functional architecture for IP projection, and thereupon IP becomes the dominant structure at the initial stage of L2 acquisition. Hence all the overt LI constructions beyond IP are non-transferable, including some L2-allowed constructions such as the accusative NP beyond IP. However, while learners may initially have the correct feeling that some LI-allowed constructions are unacceptable in the L2, they may not know their proper L2 replacements. At the performance level, learners may either try to avoid such constructions or use them as a makeshift, especially at the intermediate stage of L2 acquisition. At the competence level, the initial restructuring in the realm beyond IP remains inexorable throughout all stagesTo verify the above observations, we conducted an investigation using subjects at different learning stages. They were asked to make acceptability judgments on six categories of English sentences whose structures involved LI-copied beyond-IP constructions. The judgment task consisted of two parts. Part 1 was made up of decontextualized sentences. Part 2 contained sentences that were embedded indiscourse segments. The main findings fall into two categories: trigger-free and trigger-driven initial achievements in L2-English acquisition. The trigger-free achievements come as a result of immunity from the LI influence, i.e. non-transferability of the LI root CP projection. The trigger-driven achievements are attributable to the steady rebuilding of the L2-specific functional CP structure. This includes the mastery of wh-fronting and relative pronoun fronting, the unlearning of the LI in-situ wh-construction, and the spontaneous restructuring of an LI-specific root CP into an L2-allowed root I...
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