Subject/Object Asymmetry in wh-Questions in Second Language Acquisition

This study examines subject/object asymmetry in wh-question production in adult second language learners. In an oral production test, a lower error rate was observed for object wh-questions than for subject wh-questions. Two contrasting principles are responsible for the asymmetry of preference and accuracy between subject and object wh-questions. Minimal Attachment Principle (Frazier 1987) accounts for the inferior performance on subject wh-questions, while Depth of Embedding Principle (O’Grady 1997) proposes an opposite prediction: subject wh-questions are strongly preferred. The results of the current study show that object wh-questions involved more errors than subject wh-questions in an elicited production test. This suggests that the Minimal Attachment Principle is an appropriate theoretical framework of the subject/object asymmetry at least in second language processing,