This study investigates Korean learners acquisition pattern of English PRO as L2. Also, the influence of lexical knowledge on the acquisition of English PRO is studied. Eighty high school and college students between the ages of 16 and 23 participated in the two experimental tests. To investigate the influence of lexical knowledge, we used and informed the students about the basic lexical meaning of the verb promise , structures of infinitival complement structures, and pragmatic lead in Sherman and Lust (1993). As in L1 learners, Korean learners overgeneralized the choice of object as an antecedent in control structures. We explain the overgeneralization as a result of the syntactic principle of minimality . For the improvement after attainment of lexical information and the pragmatic lead, we argue that the two modules -- syntax and lexicon -- worked together. Consequently, the results of this study strongly support those of Sherman and Lust (1993) in L2 acquisition.
1. Introduction
2. Linguistic Theory of Control
3. Previous Studies of the acquisition of Infinitival Complements
4. Hypotheses
5. This Study
6. Results and Interpretation
6. Conclusions