Derivational Morphology and the Competence and Intuition of Dutch L2 Learners of English: Suffixation

Abstract

The main goal of this thesis is essentially two-fold. In an investigation of speakers with Dutch as their L1 and English as their L2, the goal is not only to see whether Dutch L2 learners of English “have competence” in the system with regards to English affixation and what their intuitions are, but also to see whether L2 learners of different levels of competence in English overall, show different degrees of competence in the specific task that was given to them. If the L2 learners turn out to “have competence”, or “growing competence”, in the system this might tell us something about the availability of UG to L2 learners. In order to test the morphological competence of these learners a so-called “fill in the blank” test was set up.