Article published In:
Australian Review of Applied LinguisticsVol. 27:1 (2004) ► pp.89–103
Interrogative structures in the interlanguage of ESL learners
Further evidence of the role of language universals
English interlanguage interrogative structures examined with regard to two implicational universals were found to be supportive of predictive validity of the universals (Eckman, Moravcsik & Wirth, 1989). This study further tests the extent to which the two universals could hold for English interlanguage in a different setting. The two implicational universals at issue were formulated by Greenberg (1963) who claimed that subject-verb inversion occurs in yes-no questions only if it also occurs in wh-questions, and that subject-verb inversion in wh-questions occurs only if wh-words/phrases are fronted. Unlike Eckman et al’s study, the present study used interview and role-play tasks to collect data from fifty-two ESL learners at the Monash University English Language Centre; however, findings of this study are comparable to those of Eckman et al (1989) in that they also strongly support the observed universals. A tentative explanation in terms of fossilisation, though, seems to account more appropriately for the exception in this study.
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