Target-like Syntactic Representations of L1 Thai Learners: A Case of L2 English Number Agreement

Abstract

The study investigated the representations of L1 Thai learners on English number agreement, a form which is non-existent in Thai. It is hypothesized that the L2 learners have target-like syntactic representations of English number agreement according to the non-impairment view of the Missing Surface Inflectional Hypothesis (MSIH), and against the impairment view of the Failed Functional Feature Hypothesis (FFFH). The participants were 58 intermediate and 45 advanced Thai undergraduates. The study was conducted via two tests, a Cloze Test and a Grammatical Judgment Task. Both tests featured singular/plural head nouns with modification and irregular nouns. The results showed that the L2 learners’ accuracy on English number agreement was above 80% on the structures of singular/plural head with modification. However, deviant production was found on irregular nouns. The results indicated the learners’ target-like syntactic representations of English number agreement but incomplete knowledge of lexicon. The L2 learners can access Universal Grammar on the grammatical area not found in their L1. The participants were assumed to be less exposed to the irregular nouns featured in the study so those nouns in their lexicon were not tagged with target-like syntactic information. Since the results indicated that the L2 learners do not have syntactic impairment of English number agreement and incomplete knowledge of lexicon can explain the deviant production of the irregular nouns, FFFH is contradicted and MSIH is confirmed.