ABSTRACT
Research on normative language (L2) acquisition has long focused on the role of the native language (L1). A commonly held intuition is that what happens in acquiring a second language is nontrivially dependent, at least in part, on the properties of the L1 grammar, and this intuition has received much empirical support over the last 30 years. One hypothesis is that the entirety of the L1 grammar is the departure point in L2 acquisition; for ease of exposition, the author calls this view Absolute L1 Influence. What is important to keep in mind in this brief introduction is that the attractiveness of the Vainikka and Young-Scholten hypothesis is that it offers a principled explanation, based on a principled distinction in linguistic theorizing, both for some of the similarities between L1 and L2 acquisition and for the differences between L1 and L2 acquisition.
