This study examines the acquisition of the inflectional system by a Turkish child learner of English. Results from longitudinal data collected over 18 months are reported, presenting counterevidence for recent hypotheses on early L2 acquisition according to which missing functional items reflect missing functional categories (e.g., Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996a, 1996b). Despite robust evidence for the early production of copula be, auxiliary be, and overt subjects, the child L2 data analyzed in this paper do not show any evidence for tense and agreement morphology in the early stages of L2 development. In other words, although some functional elements related to IP are missing, the learner is able to perform other morphological and syntactic operations involving the functional projection IP. These findings lead us to question whether the lack of functional elements entails the lack of functional categories.

This study investigates the issue of crosslinguistic influence in the domain of subject realization in Turkish in simultaneous acquisition of Turkish and English. The use of subjects in a null subject language like Turkish is a phenomenon linked to the pragmatics—syntax interface of the grammar and, thus, is a domain where crosslinguistic interference is predicted to occur in bilingual acquisition (Hulk and Müller, 2000; Müller and Hulk, 2001). Spontaneous Turkish data collected from one Turkish—English bilingual child, Ali-John, and one Turkish monolingual child, Murat, are compared. Our results reveal that Ali-John’s production of overt subjects in Turkish is more than that of the control child. These findings could be interpreted as due to crosslinguistic influence from English regarding the suppliance of overt subjects in the context of Turkish—English bilingual acquisition.

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This study examines the status of the functional categories in child second language (L2) acquisition of English. Results from longitudinally collected data are reported, presenting counterevidence for recent hypotheses on early L2 acquisition that assume (1) a structure-building approach according to which the acquisition of functional categories follows an implicational sequence of development of VP-IP-CP (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1994; 1996a; 1996b; 1998); and (2) a direct relationship between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and the development of functional categories (Eubank, 1993/94; 1996; Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1994; 1996a; 1996b; 1998). The child L2 data analysed in this article show that the development of CP is not implicationally contingent on the prior acquisition of IP. The data also suggest that the lack of morphological forms in interlanguage grammars reflects a problem with the realization of surface morphology, rather than an impairment in the domain of functional projections.

This chapter reviews current work on child second language acquisition from a generative perspective. The primary goal is to identify characteristics of child L2 acquisition in relation to child first language (L1) acquisition and adult second language (L2) acquisition and to discuss its contribution to these sister fields both in typical and atypical domains. The chapter is organized into three sections, covering L1 influence in child L2 acquisition, the acquisition of functional architecture in child L2 acquisition, and the issue of morphological variability. Also included in the last section are the relatively new and fast developing areas of research in atypical child L2 acquisition research.

and to test Gavruseva's aspectual features account, according to which inherent aspectual properties of the verbs such as telicity and punctuality determine which verbs will be non-finite and which verbs will not (Gavruseva, 2002;2003;2004) in child L2 acquisition. Based on longitudinal data from a Turkish child second language (L2) learner of English, we present counter evidence for both hypotheses. First, it is shown that despite the fact that the early production of past tense morphology occurs exclusively with punctual predicates, data from copula be, auxiliary do and pronominal subjects do not show any evidence for defective tense. Second, contrary to what is predicted in Gavruseva's hypothesis, the rate of uninflected punctual verbs is much higher than that of uninflected non-punctual verbs in the child L2 grammar.Keywords: child L2 acquisition, L2 tense-aspect morphology, Underspecification of Aspect Hypothesis, optional/root infinitives in L2 © 2007© SAGE 10.1177 Second Language Research 23,4 (2007); pp. 383-417 Address for correspondence: Belma Haznedar, Department of Foreign Language Education, Bogaziçi University, 34342 Bebek/Istanbul, Turkey; e-mail: haznedab@boun.edu.tr I IntroductionIt has long been noted that grammatical morphemes cause problems for learners both in first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition (e.g. Brown, 1973;Dulay et al., 1982). In most cases, learners exhibit optionality or variability in the use of morphology relating to tense, agreement, case and/or gender as well as functional elements such as determiners, complementizers and auxiliaries. To this end, much work in L1 and L2 acquisition since the 1970s has explored the presence or absence of verbal and nominal inflection. In regard to the verbal domain, the focus has been on the development of tense-aspect morphology in monolingual and bilingual language acquisition (e.g. Antinucci and Miller, 1976; Bloom et al., 1980;Schlyter, 1990;Shirai and Andersen, 1995;Shirai, 1998; Behrens, 2001), as well as in adult L2 acquisition (e.g. Robison, 1995; BardoviHarlig and Bergström, 1996;Slabakova, 1999;2001). Following the Aspect Hypothesis, in some of these studies L1 and L2 researchers have argued that verbal inflections in early interlanguage grammars function primarily as markers of lexical aspect. That is, when inflections emerge, they are not evenly distributed across all verbs, but mark inherent aspect, not deictic tense.In child L2 acquisition, on the other hand, recent work has mainly concentrated on the acquisition of tense and agreement morphology (e.g. Lakshmanan, 1994;Gavruseva and Lardiere, 1996;Grondin and White, 1996;Prévost, 1997;Paradis et al., 1998;Haznedar, 2001;Ionin and Wexler, 2002). With the exception of some studies (e.g. Rohde, 1996;Gavruseva, 2002;2003;2004), there has been little discussion of how tense-aspect morphology develops in child L2 acquisition. Based on longitudinal data from a Turkish-speaking child L2 learner of English, the primary aim of this article is to investigate the acquisition...

School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom learning environments with respect to the multilingualism. The questionnaire was piloted and subsequently completed by 2792 teachers across different European countries. Eleven countries provided sufficient data for analyses. Results from structural equation modelling showed that teachers’ attitudes could be reliably measured across Europe with the use of carefully devised questionnaire, whose loading and factor structure remained invariant across countries. Teachers’ views about multilingualism were most challenged by the numbers of children in their classes, not the percentage of multilingual pupils in the class. Countries differed in how they perceived multilingualism, with their differences leading to distinctive country clusters. Gender and education level (elementary vs. secondary) differences were also observed irrespective of country. These findings enhance our understanding of the role that the characteristics of teachers and their classrooms play in a multilingual setting across diverse European settings. The practical relevance of the results and new opportunities for teacher training are discussed.

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