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Current Perspectives on Generative SLA - Processing, Influence, and Interfaces: Selected proceedings of the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference
Edited by Marta Velnić, Anne Dahl and Kjersti Faldet Listhaug
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 70] 2024
► pp. 220–237

Chapter 9
Sensitivity to silently structured interveners

Sluicing interpretation in L2 learners

| Waseda University,
One of the central issues in generative approaches to second language acquisition is whether second language (L2) learners can use syntactic manipulation in the L2, as they do in the first language (L1). To explore this issue, this study investigates sensitivity to intervention effects in sluicing structures, specifically, the asymmetry between object and subject extraction. The results of a picture-sentence judgment task indicate that L1-Japanese/L2-English learners with relatively low proficiency exhibit sensitivity to the intervention effect, showing greater difficulty in the case of object extraction in both non-sluicing and sluicing structures. Consequently, this study suggests that even learners with low L2 proficiency can achieve deep syntactic manipulations, including building up an elided structure and moving the wh-element from it.
Keywords: intervention effect, sluicing, subject extraction, object extraction, syntactic manipulations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Syntax of sluicing in English and Japanese
    • 2.2Theoretical approaches to the structure of sluicing
    • 2.3Acquisition of sluicing
    • 2.4Theoretical accounts of the intervention effect
    • 2.5Relative difficulty of sentences with intervening elements
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Methods
    • 3.3Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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