An Empirical Study On The Acquisition Of Wh-questions By Chinese EFL Learners

In the second language acquisition(SLA)research,the generative approach to it is an important branch,of which the research on the accessibility of Universal Grammar(UG)has always been a hot issue.Some scholars have wondered whether the proposal of UG which facilitates the first language acquisition(FLA)can be held true for SLA.Generally,second language(L2)researchers investigate whether L2 learners possess the knowledge of the UG principles in SLA.And the universal principles under investigation do not operate in their native language.Along with this line,one constraint on wh-movement in wh-questions termed Subjacency has frequently been adopted as a test case to verify whether interlanguage grammars are UG-constrained.A great number of relevant studies on the sensitivity to Subjacency have been conducted.However,there appears to be no consensus on this issue.And being a domain specific knowledge,Subjacency has always been drawn much attention from many linguists.Some scholars hold that L2 learners are sensitive to this UG principle,or in other words,this principle is available to L2 learners,thus affirm the role of UG in SLA.While some scholars argue that L2 learners are not available to UG principle which supports claims for the nonavailability of UG.Therefore,further investigations are needed.Here,the exploration is put on the syntactic representations in L2 learners' acquisition of English wh-questions and the nature of the interlanguage grammars.The current study investigates the inter-knowledge of English wh-questions in Chinese learners of English under the framework of Minimalist Program(MP).It explores the mental representations of L2 learners in the acquisition of wh-questions,and how the knowledge of English wh-questions develops over time.Meanwhile,further exploration is on whether UG operates in SLA of English wh-questions,and whether L2 learners' interlanguage grammars are impaired or not.A questionnaire survey is adopted in this study,with the Question Formation task and the Grammaticality Judgment task as the instruments.The total number of the subjects is 71,and they are divided into three groups,namely,elementary,intermediate and advanced,according to their English proficiency.The major findings of the study are as follows: firstly,Chinese EFL learners can acquire the syntactic representations of wh-questions,that is,they can acquire the formal features [Q],[wh],[EPP],[Tns] of category C in the acquisition of wh-questions,and the wh-fronting and subject-auxiliary inversion have been taken as the evidence for the mastery of these syntactic formal features.Secondly,Chinese EFL learners show their sensitivities to Subjacency principle.They are inclined to reject ungrammatical wh-questions violating the principle.And they show different sensitivities to different violation structures.The stronger the violation degree is,the greater the tendency to rejecting to the violation is shown.Thirdly,their knowledge of English wh-questions is positively correlated to their English proficiency.As the proficiency increased,their performances on the wh-questions become better,and they show a greater tendency to reject the Subjacency violations.The results of the present study show that Chinese EFL learners can acquire the relevant functional categories in their acquisition of wh-questions,and they show the sensitivity to Subjacency principle,suggesting that UG is still accessible to SLA,the interlanguage grammars are not impaired.Moreover,their knowledge of relevant grammars is increased as their proficiency levels raised.Overall,the present study has provided an additional empirical evidence for the study on the role of UG in SLA and the impairment of interlanguage grammars.