Another Take on the L2 Initial State: Evidence From Comprehension in L2 German

Abstract

The nature of the initial state in second-language (L2) acquisition is a much debated but still unresolved issue, due in part to the empirical problem of obtaining production data from L2 learners at very early stages in development. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, this article presents evidence from a comprehension-based experiment involving 17 adult English-speaking learners of German at the initial state. The experiment investigates learners' interpretations of ambiguous wh-questions (e.g., Was beisst die Katze? 'What is biting the cat?/What is the cat biting?') in a picture interpretation task. The results present clear evidence against the Minimal Trees hypothesis (Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994; 1996a; 1996b)), which proposes that early L2 grammars lack functional categories, while lending support to a Full Transfer position (e.g., Schwartz and Sprouse (1994; 1996)), which holds that the L1 grammar as a whole constitutes the L2 initial state.