The Initial State in the L2 Acquisition of Phrase Structure

This chapter focuses on the acquisition of English, and in particular on the end state: the linguistic knowledge of deaf adults. This model of the acquisition of English by deaf people has also been tested and supported in other studies. It also examines knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibited by the deaf participants in some of the studies reported here, for use as a baseline in comparison to their knowledge of English. Universal Grammar (UG) is the set of universal linguistic principles that hold for all languages, along with certain parameters that define a limited extent of linguistic variation. According to the UG theory, language acquisition is mediated by innate knowledge of these universal linguistic principles and parameters, part of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Although a bit more about the acquisition of ASL in these groups is discussed, this chapter focuses on their acquisition of English.