The morphology/syntax interface in child L2 acquisition: Evidence from verbal morphology

Recent work in both adult and child L2 acquisition has focused on the question of whether morphological variability suggests syntactic impairment, or the lack of overt inflection could be attributable to problems associated with surface morphology (e.g. Lardiere 1998a, b; Haznedar & Schwartz 1997; Prévost & White 2000). This paper examines longitudinal data from three Turkish-speaking child L2 learners of English with special reference to inflected and uninflected verbs, copula be forms, null subjects and case on pronominal subjects. Results show that despite high rates of uninflected verb forms, the children almost never use agreement morphemes for inappropriate tense, person or number. The learners also show higher proficiency in the use of be forms than in the use of main verb inflection.