Accessibility of Subjacency Principle and Empty Category Principle to SLA

Abstract

A foreign language is essential for promoting world exchanges. Chomsky's theory of universal grammar is one of the representative theories to reveal how language learners acquire their mother tongue. However, in recent years, more and more researchers have focused on the accessibility of UG to SLA. This study investigates the accessibility of UG to 50 native Chinese university students by investigating their acquisition of the two general grammar principles of WH word shift limit: Adjacency Principle and Empty Category Principle. Another 5 native English speakers are set up in the control group. Questionnaires and quantitative analysis are used in this study. The author tested the students’ general performance both in the grammatical judgment and in the reading comprehension and their attitudes towards the questions, which violate either the Subjacency Principle or the Empty Category Principle. The author finds that by comparing the accuracy of the two groups, these native students are similarly sensitive to the two universal principles with English people; that is to say, the Universal Grammar is accessible to these Chinese university students’ English acquisition.