Acquisition of Structures at Syntax-Discourse Interface: Post-Verbal Subjects in L2 English

• Authors: Liljana Mitkovska , Eleni Bužarovska , Natasha Stojanovska-Ilievska

Abstracts

EN

The present study explores the acceptability of postverbal subjects by intermediate and advanced L2 English learners with L1 Macedonian, a pro-drop Slavic language with rich verbal morphology. The two languages differ regarding the distribution of subject-verb inversion (SVI): in Macedonian, it is a default pattern in thetic sentences, but English severely restricts SVI to specific contexts. To test the hypothesis that Macedonian learners encounter difficulties in acquisition of English SVI because of crosslinguistic influence, a grammaticality judgement and correction task was administered to two groups of Macedonian learners of English and a control group of English native speakers. The results revealed that L2 learners find English VS sentences and VS + it-insertion examples more acceptable than the native speakers, but the performance of the advanced group is closer to the native speakers than to the intermediate learners. Both non-native groups accept more readily inappropriate English sentences that conform to typical L1 structures.

Keywords

EN

subject inversion; information structure; word order; interface hypothesis

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Śląski
• Journal: Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 1-22

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Liljana Mitkovska

• AUE-FON University in Skopje

• https://orcid.org/0000000244474289

author

Eleni Bužarovska

• Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje

• https://orcid.org/0000000213340501

author

Natasha Stojanovska-Ilievska

• Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje

• https://orcid.org/0000000312210999

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Identifiers

DOI

10.31261/TAPSLA.13311

Biblioteka Nauki

22446725