Ultimate Attainment In Second Language Acquisition

Ultimate attainment, one of central issue in second language acquisition study, has been investigated by different researchers with different results. This study, by comparing the lexical frequency of Chinadaily and Guardian, investigated the ultimate attainment of Chinese L2 learners from the perspective of the overuse and underuse, finding that there is overwhelming underuse of the closed-class words in Chinadaily. The underlying reasons for this divergence is investigated from the language processing perspective, revealing that adult learners rely more on the top-down processing and parallel processing, which tend to degenerate the input information available to the learners' LAD, due to their cognitive advance, and that L2 learners may ignore some syntax information represented by the closed-class words as a result of the L1 interference. Another finding is that closed-class words are perceptually and conceptually less salient than open class words; they, therefore, are more easily passed unnoticed. All of these factors contribute to the L2 learners' ultimate attainment stopping short of the native-like competence. This analysis also bears out several predictions, such as the more the closed-class words rely on the open class words to form a meaningful chunk, the more difficult it is for the L2 learners to acquire it, and it also sheds some doubt on three hypotheses advanced by other researchers: Critical Period Hypothesis, Input Hypothesis and Comprehensible Output Hypothesis.