|
Home page List of proceedings Info for readers Info for authors Info for editors Info for libraries Order form Shopping cart |
Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2006): The Banff Conference edited by Mary Grantham O'Brien, Christine Shea, and John Archibald ISBN 1-57473-416-4 library binding v+161 pages publication date: 2006 published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA Table of contents Abstract Mohammad Javad Rezai L2 Acquisition of English 'Verb + Prepositional Phrase' and 'Verb + Particle' Constructions by Persian Speakers 114-123 (complete pdf) This paper examines the acquisition of English VPPs and VPC constructions by Persian learners of English. The two syntactic properties in English enjoy the same linear but different distributional features. Such syntactic features are absent in Persian due to the lack of VPCs in general and the discontinuous complex predicate in particular. This asymmetry poses a learnability paradox for Persian speakers. The results show that the L2 learners have acquired the subtle syntactic distinctions between VPPs and VPC properties such as pied-piping and adverbial insertion. This in turn adds plausible support to the 'poverty of the stimulus' argument from the perspective of distributional syntax. |