Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers' second language (L2) acquisition of English "wh-on-earth" questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or "who on earth"). An acceptability judgment task, a…

Most studies in the second language (L2) literature that deal with interface issues do so in holistic terms. On the one hand, researchers have suggested that interface relations between the syntax and other domains are particularly difficult for adult L2 learners. On the other, it has been argued that such relations can be established in a…

In this article, an empirical study of how Chinese wh-questions are mentally represented in Japanese speakers' grammars of Chinese as a second language (L2) is reported. Both Chinese and Japanese are generally considered "wh-in-situ" languages in which a wh-word is allowed to remain in its base-generated position, and both languages use question…

Reports a study investigating the status of thematic verbs in second language acquisition (SLA) of Chinese by French-speaking, German-speaking, and English-speaking learners. Provides evidence that the thematic verb does not raise in SLA of Chinese, which casts doubt on the reliability of these hypotheses in the second language literature.…

Investigated the interpretation of the Chinese reflexive "ziji" by 57 English speakers and 24 Japanese speakers. Participants completed multiple-choice comprehension tests. Results indicated that first-language transfer occurred in second-language acquisition of the Chinese reflexive "ziji." (SM)