| The research detailed in this thesis seeks to address two long standing questions in the field of L2 acquisition: the question of whether new structure can be acquired in a second language, and the question of how to account formally for the degree of difficulty of any new structure. With respect to the acquisition of segmental phonology, two existing proposals account for observed acquisition patterns by making reference to phonological features, These proposals are tested empirically using event-related potentials in order to assess and compare the neural activity elicited by native and nonnative sounds among monolinguals, and L2 learners at various stages of acquisition. The results indicate that while young children with sufficient L2 exposure may acquire new features, adults cannot, regardless of the duration of L2 study; they do, however, show neural evidence of improving their perceptual abilities with respect to new L2 segments as proficiency improves. |
