ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of experimental research on the L2 acquisition of quantifier scope interpretation, focusing on doubly quantified sentences and sentences containing a quantifier and negation. Crosslinguistically, a surface-scope interpretation of such sentences is generally readily available. However, languages differ with regard to whether an inverse-scope interpretation is also permitted. The chapter introduces key theoretical accounts of these differences, and briefly outlines representative research on quantifier scope in L1 acquisition. Turning to L2, much of the research investigates the extent to which the inverse-scope properties of the target L2 can be acquired. A variety of L1–L2 combinations are investigated, as well as limited L3 research. Most studies use offline judgement tasks, though some processing, priming and training studies have also been conducted. The collective results of this research bear on key questions in L2 acquisition, including the role of prior knowledge, the mechanisms that shape L2 acquisition (Universal Grammar, processing economy), and whether different domains of language knowledge (syntax, pragmatics) engender different acquisition problems. Further exploration of the L2 acquisition of quantifier scope has the potential to shed light on linguistic analyses of quantifier properties, on the effectiveness of different types of L2 training, and on experiment design.
