ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses the problem of variable occurrence of functional, especially inflectional morphology in adult L2 learners. It examines three currently prominent hypotheses which seek to account for this phenomenon in light of known empirical facts: the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH), the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MIH) and the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (PTH). Inflectional morphology and function words are the overt realization of such properties, tense morphology relating to Tense features, agreement morphology to Agreement, and so forth. Hawkins and colleagues share the assumption that absence of overt morphology is indicative of representational deficits in L2. The chapter compares the acquisition of L2 English by native speakers of French and Mandarin with respect to verbal features, namely, tense and agreement, and nominal features, namely, number and definiteness. The PTH makes much more specific predictions as to precisely which aspects of functional morphology should prove problematic or unproblematic in interlanguage production.
