The effect of age on parameter resetting: Arabic-speaking children and adults' acquisition of English relative clause structure as assessed through interlanguage data and a universal constraint

This study investigated the question of whether age has an effect on the ability to reset a parameter whose value differs in the L1 and L2. Twenty-one children and twenty-one adults whose native language is Arabic were given an English judgment task involving grammatical and ungrammatical extractions from relative clauses. While English uses movement of an operator to generate such structures, in Arabic they are base-generated with a resumptive pronoun in the extraction site, and hence are not subject to subjacency. Subjects were given versions of the sentences instantiating both the L1 and L2 parameter settings. Results show no difference overall between the groups, and no interaction effect for structural type (operators or resumptives), complexity (1- or 2-clause extractions), or structure and complexity. Moreover, the same pattern was found for both groups of doing well at judging the sentences instantiating the L2 setting, but poorly on those instantiating the L1 setting. Based on the results, it was proposed that rather than being an instantaneous process of parameter resetting, what instead occurs is a gradual process of parameter reshifting in which the two settings coexist during the transition, a pattern which is also found in L1 acquisition and for languages undergoing historical change. Such a process involves two steps: resetting a parameter, which is easy and quick, and unsetting a parameter, which is slower and more difficult. The rate at which this process occurs is affected by the extent to which the L1 still plays a role in the learners' lives, the length of time that the L1 has been their sole language, and individual variation.