Acquisition of the Verb Movement Parameter in French by Adult English Speakers

This paper focuses on a parametric difference between French and English, namely the verb movement parameter. Previous re-search shows that verb-raising in causes learnability problems for Anglophone learners. Because of raising French, an adverb may be placed its direct object, allowing subject-verb-adverb-object (S-V-Adv-O) structure. However, lack prohibits S-V-Adv-O structure English. The acquisition is well-documented topic second language (L2) research. previous L2 studies have focused speakers who are initial stage their acquisition. present parameter by group intermediate whose first (L1) It also investigates two models, Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) Full Transfer Access (FTFAH). FFFH predicts unable to reset parameters from L1 values settings, as they do not access Universal Grammar (UG). On contrary, FTFAH suggests can target settings due full accessibility UG. data was collected via three tasks: acceptability judgment task, preference production task. findings suggest L1-English–L2-French had fully acquired placement French. Therefore, results sup-port FFFH, settings.