ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the contingency in child second language acquisition (L2A) English between, on the one hand, the acquisition of Determiner Phrase (DP) and [+/-definite], and finiteness in clauses on the other. She hypothesizes that clauses lack finiteness so long as the DP functional layer has not been acquired. The author attempts to explore many facets of the telic–atelic dimension in the child second language (L2) data. Her primary interest lies in studying children's acquisition of the categories D and Q and whether the knowledge of these categories plays any role in the acquisition of finiteness. She takes the underspecification approach to early clause structure and so assumes that DP and QP are initially underspecified in child L2. The author assumes the strong Universal Grammar (UG) position in the sense that L2 children will be aided by Universal Grammar in having D available to them from the inventory of universal functional categories.
