The Acquisition of Control and Object Clauses by

Child ESL/EFL Learners

Tatyana Fedorikhina

     This dissertation describes complex clause acquisition by child ESL/EFL learners of English and identifies acquisition stages of three types of clauses that have not been analyzed in detail before. The thesis demonstrates the Optimality Theory may be successfully used to account for second language acquisition data.

Data in the form of stories based on two picture books were collected from 92 learners of English aged 6 to 12 whose first language is either Russian or Spanish. A cross-sectional analysis indicates that the acquisition of subject control, object control, and object clauses develops to near adult English structure in six distinct stages.

The dissertation further demonstrates that each state of acquisition is characterized by a unique hierarchy of Optimality Theory constraints. The analysis makes use of three constraints already proposed in the OT literature to account for other grammatical aspects of complex clauses, showing their novel applicability to the analysis of control and object clauses. The analysis also proposes two new structural constraints: Have a Complementizer Phrase and Have a Non-Tensed Inflection Phrase which are motivated by the emergence of the complementizer that in object control and object clauses and by the acquisition of infinitival to. Gradual re-ranking of these constraints accounts for the six stages of the acquisition of complex clause structure. Further, it is shown that only a single constraint is re-ranked in the development of each stage, which is consistent with existing hypotheses in the OT literature regarding constraint re-ranking.

The constraints are hypothesized to be universal, that is, they are present in the grammars of learners from different age groups and with different first languages. Thus, the same constraints are present in the learner’s first and second language grammars. It is hypothesized here that in part language transfer occurs when the learner uses the constraint ranking from the first language in the process of acquisition of the second language. The thesis demonstrates that the constraints characterizing binding may account for the transfer of null object pronouns into child ESL.

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Revised September 13, 2001