1993/07/01 by Lynn Eubank · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Psychology · #EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning #Multilingual Education and Policy #Language Development and Disorders
paper · doi:10.1207/s15327817la0303_1
openalex publication_date 1993/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
White (e.g., 1990/1991; 1992a) argued that grammatical representations in second-language development can be understood in terms of parametric values that are transferred from the learner's native language. Schwartz (1993a; 1993b) and Schwartz and Sprouse (1994) push this view of transfer to its logical limit: The initial state of L2 acquisition is determined in its entirety by the parametric values of the native language. This article presents early-stage learner data that are not compatible with this strong view of parametric transfer. An alternative proposal is made, a weak transfer view in which lexical and functional projections transfer, and the headedness of those projections transfers, but morphology-driven values of features like the strength of agreement do not transfer. This idea is checked against learner data and is also evaluated for the extent to which it follows in a principled fashion from linguistic theory.