Variability in L2 learning: insights from verb phrase ellipsis in Greek learners of English

This study investigates variability in second language learning. It contributes new data to the ongoing discussion on whether L2 learners can acquire grammatical phenomena that are absent from their L1. We focus on knowledge of English Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) in Greek advanced learners of English and explore reasons for variability in their performance. Greek does not have VPE of the English type and the subtleties surrounding its regulation make it unlikely that most learners can obtain these rules from the linguistic data available to them. If this is so, then the proficiency they illustrate must tap into underlying knowledge they already possess. We examine this knowledge by testing their judgements of (a) VPE sentence sets where there is strict parallelism between the antecedent and elided clause, (b) VPE sentence sets where this parallelism is disrupted, and (c) VPE sentence sets whose acceptability is mediated by the interpretability of the aspectual feature in the elided clause. 27 Greek learners of English and 30 L1 speakers of English undertook a sentence-completion judgement task similar to that of Hawkins (2012). Greek participants accepted VPE sentences in principle and rejected those ruled out by recoverability (Rouveret 2012). However, their judgements of examples mediated by interpretability did not demonstrate conclusively whether they could distinguish between interpretable (perfective) and uninterpretable (progressive) features in English. Our data provide fresh cross-linguistic support for L2 learners being able to acquire constructions absent from their L1 and to adhere to the restrictions that regulate them. However, they remain inconclusive as to whether it is a sensitivity to feature interpretability that answers for the variability evident in their responses to (c), a finding that merits further testing.