Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) · 1986 · 537 citations · 11 references
Language StudiesGermanLinguisticsLanguage AcquisitionLanguage DevelopmentSecond Language LearningGrammarGrammar AcquisitionLanguage LearningSecond Language AcquisitionSecond Language DevelopmentWord OrderAdult Language LearningFirst Language DevelopmentObject-subject-verb OrderObject-verb-subject OrderSubject-object-verb OrderVerb Final OrderVerb-final Word OrderVerb-subject-object Order
Children learning German as their first language grasp its verb-final character from the very beginning. Adults learning German as a second language tend to assume in the beginning that it has a subject-verb-object order, and modify this hypothesis only gradually. We argue that this difference is due to the fact that children have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when learning the language, allowing them to make more abstract hypotheses, while adults can only rely on general learning strategies.
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