earticle

영어

Eubank, Bischof et al. (1997) reported optional verb-raising during the course of second language acquisition. Following Beck (1998), they have suggested, accordingly, that L2 knowledge of functional categories associated with feature strength is permanently impaired. In order to reexamine Eubank’s view, this paper investigated EFL learners’ grammars. An oral translation task and a grammaticality judgment task were administered to explore their knowledge of English (ir)regular verbal morphology and verb placement, respectively. This paper argues that despite overall suppression in adult learners’ performance involving lexical verb and adverb placements, the adult EFL learners in this study as well as the study of Eubank and his colleagues attain significant sensitivity to the discrepancy in grammaticality between unraised and raised verbs. Moreover, as far as the EFL learners’ accurate use of suppletive forms is concerned, an agreement feature-checking mechanism appears to be operative in learners’ grammars. Hence these findings call for a reconsideration of Eubank’s view on variability in verb placement in adult learners’ grammars.