A Study On The Acquisition Of English Wh-questions By Chinese Learners

The role of Universal Grammar (UG) in second language acquisition (SLA) has generated much hotdebate since early1980s. Some scholars have wondered whether the proposal of UG which facilitates thefirst language acquisition (FLA) can be held true for SLA. Numerous studies have been conducted toinvestigate the second language (L2) learner’s knowledge of UG principles which are not instantiated intheir FLA and subjacency principle which places universal constraint on wh-movement is just the case. Anumber of second language researchers have tested the sensitivities of subjacnecy principle on the part ofL2learners, however, no consensus has been reached so far. Some argue that L2learners are sensitive tothe principle of subjacency and UG still mediates in L2learner’s mental grammar. While others maintainthat L2learners are not sensitive to subjacency and UG is no longer accessible to L2learners. Therefore, itis necessary to further investigate L2learner’s mental representations in the acquisition of Englishwh-questions and explore the nature of their interlanguage grammars.The present study investigates Chinese L2learner’s knowledge of subjacency which is applicable inthe English wh-questions under the framework of Minimalist Program (MP). It aims to explore the mentalrepresentations of L2learners in the acquisition of English wh-questions and the impairment of theirinterlanguage grammars (ILGs). In other words, we try to investigate whether UG is accessible to L2learners and to what extent UG is accessible to L2learners. This study adopts a questionnaire whichcontains grammatical judgment task, and46Chinese L2learners are selected according to their languagelevels, namely, elementary, intermediate and advanced. With the help of SPSS software and based on theobtained data and analyses, the following conclusions have been drawn: firstly, Chinese L2learners canacquire the strong feature of [Q] in English and its motivating force for wh-movement. Secondly, they donot accept the ungrammatical sentences which involve subjacency violations and have a strong tendency toreject strong subjacency violations more often than that of weak violations, which is the evidence of theoperations of subjacency principle in their SLA. Thirdly, L2learners may resort to their L1parametersetting and representations in the construction of L2interrogative clauses at the early stage, but they willeventually acquire the L2functional categories with their language level and language input increased. In sum, L2learners’ mental grammars are constrained by UG and their ILGs are not impaired. The currentstudy has provided additional evidence for the research on the role of UG in SLA and the impairment ofinterlanguages.