Second Language Acquisition as a Natural Language

Abstract

Over the past half century, the theory of generative grammar has been one of the main approaches used to analyze language acquisition and has contributed to several major advancements in the field. This paper reviews some of the previous research on Wh-questions from the perspective of the “third factor” in language design (Chomsky, 2005), in order to point out some of the theoretical issues and to explore the direction of future research in second language acquisition.