| For a long time , the issue of accessibility of Universal Grammar(UG) in Second Language Acquisition(SLA)has been the focus of the SLA researchers under the framework of generative grammar. If UG operates in L2 acquisition, L2 learners should internalize knowledge that they could not have obtained from L2 input alone . The strongest arguments in favor of the operation of UG in L2 acquisition will be made in cases where effects of the L1 can be eliminated altogether. This is the reason why Subjacency is chosen to test UG hypothesis in Chinese learners of English . Subjacency Principle has been activated both in English and Chinese , but it is applied in different domains; in English it constrains the formation of wh-questions but in Chinese it does not, because the wh-word in Chinese special questions does not move to the beginning of the sentence . If UG principles are fully accessible to the foreign language learners , and the process of foreign language learning is a process of parameter-reassignment in which the L2 learner resets the parameter-values of the L1 to their values in the L2, then in learning English , Chinese learners are able to acquire English wh-questions under the constraints of Subjacency Principle .In order to test this hypothesis, based on previous works by Uziel(1993), Martohardjono(1991) , Flynn(1987), and White(1988), I conducted a study which examined the acquisition of Subjacency by mainland Chinese speakers learning English as a second language. A variety of constructions involving Subjacency( extraction out of an Adjunct Clause, a Relative Clause , a Complex NP Construction and a Wh-island ) were tested , and a series of assumptions have been made as follows:1 . The innate structure in the form of UG that the language acquirers are equipped with still holds true of non-primary acquisition. Foreign language learners are capable of acquiring any language property that is not instantiated in their L1. Properties of grammar which have not been activated in a particular L1 don't wither away. Thus , we assume that universal properties determiningSubjacency are still accessible in L2 acquisition, and that speakers of an LI without Subjacency or with Subjacency applied in different domains can be successful in acquiring L2 Subjacency knowledge.2. L1 transfer does not happen in SLA for those UG parameters not activated in their L1. The L1 grammar is not adopted as the L2 learner's initial state of his / her interlanguage.3. Once a learner's parameter is set at a certain value, a host of superficially unrelated constructions that are theoretically dependent on the parameter value should be available in the interlanguage grammar. For Subjacency Principle, different structures should demonstrate the same result, and because movement violations range in severity depending on the particular domain of extraction , then learners should weakly reject NP-complements and wh-island violations, and they strongly reject extractions out of relative clauses and adjuncts .4. If UG is accessible , the performance of the teacher group should be the same as the performance of the student group. It could be predicted that long complex sentences in the test may be difficult to judge to the subjects , but this does not reflect the development of the syntactic principle itself, the cognitive process underlying the development of the lexicon and its integration with already existing syntactic knowledge may be the reason . The complexity of the grammatical structure may depress the performance of the subjects in the reaction to the principle .The experimental results show that Subjacency can successfully be acquired even if the first language lacks it or applies it in different domains, and Chinese learners are found to be capable of resetting the parameter value of Subjacency principle to the English setting, thus successfully acquiring a property of language almost never taught in language classroom . This conclusion brings new evidence to support the hypothesis of direct accessibility of UG in...
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