Markedness and Salience in Second‐Language Acquisition*

This paper examines the acquisition of a typologically marked construction, preposition stranding, and its unmarked counterpart, preposition pied piping, by learners of English as a second language. Acquisition data from 95 college‐age learners show unequivocally that preposition stranding (the marked form) is acquired before preposition pied piping (the unmarked form). This apparent counterexample to the markedness hypothesis, which predicts that unmarked forms should be acquired before marked forms, suggests that a second factor, salience, also plays a role in determining acquisition order.