Article published In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 27:1 (2004) ► pp.89–103
Interrogative structures in the interlanguage of ESL learners
Further evidence of the role of language universals
Published online: 1 January 2004
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.27.1.07zha
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.27.1.07zha
Abstract
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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Li, Ran & Louise Jansen
2023. The acquisition of polar questions in Chinese learners of English as a foreign language. In Processability and Language Acquisition in the Asia-Pacific Region [Processability Approaches to Language Acquisition Research & Teaching, 9], ► pp. 258 ff.
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