Explaining frequency of verb morphology in early L2 speech

摘要: In speech, early L2 learners of English have been observed to supply forms copula be more frequently than auxiliary be, and both affixal regular past –ed 3rd person singular present tense –s in contexts where morphological marking is required for native speakers. Early also use a construction not found input: + bare V (e.g. I’m read), allow constructions involving range meanings target English, rarely overgeneralise inappropriate contexts. The study considers the kind mental representation that must would lead performance. A ‘nativist’ account proposed. It argued grammars are organised same way as speakers, this following necessarily from architecture language faculty. They differ minimally nature their Vocabulary entries verb morphology. This difference correlates with an under-determination syntactic representations ‘uninterpretable’ features absent expressions. Evidence sentence completion task conducted low proficiency speakers whose L1s Chinese Spanish used test claim.