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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 3:4 (2013) ► pp.389–414

Syntactic effects of feature-driven movement in Russian speakers’ L2 Chinese grammars

Availability of wh-topicalization in Chinese raises a question as to whether a whtopic in L2 Chinese is derived by feature-driven movement and, if it is, whether such movement is subject to syntactic constraints. The current study tests the sensitivity of very advanced Russian speakers’ L2 Chinese wh-topicalization to a complex NP island and reconstruction, which are taken as a diagnostic of movement. The results of an acceptability judgement test and a multiple choice interpretation test show that L2 Chinese grammars are constrained by a complex NP island and reconstruction, which provides empirical evidence that L2 Chinese wh-topicalization involves movement driven by an uninterpretable [+Top] feature.

Keywords: wh-topic, movement, complex NP island, reconstruction, uninterpretable feature
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Wh -topicalization in Chinese
    • 2.1 Wh-topicalization: movement or base-generation?
      • 2.1.1 Wh-questions with a complex NP island
      • 2.1.2 Reconstruction of binding relationships in wh-questions
  • 3.Previous L2 studies on the Interpretability Hypothesis and whquestions
  • 4.Research methodology
    • 4.1Research questions and hypotheses
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Procedure and test instruments
      • 4.3.1 The Acceptability Judgement Test
      • 4.3.2 The Multiple Choice Interpretation task
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1 Wh-questions with a complex NP island
    • 5.2 Wh-questions with reconstruction
  • 6.Discussion of results
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 October 2013
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.3.4.01dug
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