Fossilization in steady state L2 grammars: Persistent problems with inflectional morphology

This paper provides a case study of the fossilized endstate L2 English grammar of an adult native speaker of Turkish. Results are presented from production data (over 3400 utterances, gathered over 2 time periods 18 months apart), concentrating on verbal and nominal inflection and associated syntactic properties; data from a number of other tasks are also presented. A high level of accuracy in suppliance of English tense and agreement morphology was found. In contrast, suppliance of definite and indefinite articles was significantly lower but nevertheless appropriate. Syntactic correlates (such as verb placement, presence of overt subjects, case assignment, definiteness effects) were all completely accurate, suggesting no underlying impairment to functional categories or features. There is some evidence for influence from the L1, which has rich inflection but lacks articles, but this appears to be an effect on suppliance of overt morphology and not on underlying representation, which shows properties appropriate to the L2.