Investigating 'Full Transfer': Preliminary Data From The Adult L2 Acquisition Of Afrikaans*

Abstract

In generative linguistics, many researchers agree that (something like) Universal Grammar (UG) must play some role in second language (L2) acquisition, since the logical problem of first language (L1) acquisition1 seems to hold for L2 acquisition, as well: in L2 acquisition, as in L1 acquisition, the complex, abstract system of knowledge that the learner ends up acquiring exceeds to a great extent the primary linguistic data that the learner receives as input (see White 1989 for more detailed arguments). However, these researchers are still debating the following two questions as to the exact role of UG in L2 acquisition: (i) what constitutes the initial state of L2 acquisition? and (ii) is parameter resetting possible in situations in which the value of a certain parameter differs for the learner's L1 and the target L2? A number of hypotheses have been proposed in response to either one or both of these questions (see, for example, Clahsen and Muysken 1986, 1989; Epstein, Flynn and Martohardjono 1996; Eubank 1993/1994, 1994, 1996; Hawkins and Chan 1997; Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1994, 1996; also White 2003 for an overview). One such hypothesis is the Full Transfer Full Access hypothesis (FTFA) (e.g. Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996; White 1989, 2003) which proposes the following answers to the above questions: (i) the learner's L1 grammar (including L1 parameter settings) constitutes the initial state of L2 acquisition (= full transfer), and (ii) the L2 learner has access to UG in its entirety and, hence, parameter resetting is possible in L2 acquisition (= full access).