title: Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Second Language Acquisition of English Relatives and Embedded Wh-Questions.
abstract: This study examined subject-object asymmetry and developmental sequence in the second language (L2) acquisition of three types of wh-extraction, i.e., English headed relatives, headless relatives, and embedded wh-questions. Sixty-four L1 Korean learners of English completed an elicited imitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. The learners demonstrated a subject advantage in the headed RCs and headless RCs, but an object advantage in the embedded wh-questions, which suggests that they treat embedded wh-questions differently from headed relatives and headless relatives despite the similarities in surface forms. The learners further demonstrated the order of developing headless RCs followed by embedded wh-questions, and subsequently headed RCs, which supports the primacy of headless relatives as a simple nominal in L2 development.
authors.affiliation: Department of English, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 61790-4240, USA. hkang@ilstu.edu.
authors.forename: Hyun-Sook
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Kang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D015146:Midwestern United States; D019303:Multilingualism; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Elicited imitation; Embedded wh-questions; English as a second language; English relative clauses; Korean speakers