Interlanguage Development in English Interrogatives by Two Korean Children

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Yang, Eun-Mi. 2000. Interlanguage Development in English Interrogatives by. Two Korean Children. Linguistics 8-1, 379-401. The purpose of this research is to compare the development of English question formation by the two Korean children who were attending elementary school and acquiring English in America for about 1 year and whose age difference is two years. (One is 7 years and the other is 9 years old then.) They were acquiring English mainly at school in natural environment and used Korean after school at home. Through this study I examined some prevailing hypothesis which argues for that older children are faster than younger children in acquiring second language and studied the order of acquisition of English structures according to age differences. This longitudinal study showed that both of them used 'overgeneralization' strategy for processing their interlanguage and produced systematic and rule-governed question forms, which support the hypothesis that universal cognitive mechanisms of strategies are the basis for the child's organization of the L2 system. (Paichai University)