Why Free Morphemes are Acquired Earlier than Bound Morphemes: A Minimalist AccountPAC3

The acquisition of grammatical morphemes was intensively studied in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Recently second language researchers have been trying to account for the acquisition order, relying on certain non-linguistic factors, such as processing and/or saliency. However, these explanations are not satisfactory. Instead, I will suggest that the acquisition/ accuracy order in fact reflects the second language learners’ morpho-syntactic knowledge. By positing the differences in the requirement at the interface level and the availability of non-linguistic knowledge in first language acquisition and second language acquisition, it will be suggested that second language acquisition is PF-oriented whereas first language acquisition is LF-oriented