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The acquisition of non-null subjects in English: a minimalist account

Second language acquisition (SLA) research in the last 20 years appears to have shown that Universal Grammar (UG) constrains SLA, and a number of specific models of SLA have been offered. However, some crucial problems have been left unsolved in previous models suggested by the Principles and Parameters Approach; the Minimalist Program is likely to provide a better account of the data. The acquisition of the obligatoriness of overt subjects in English is one such problem. The Minimalist approach suggests that first language (L1) transfer is realized as the transfer of lexical items and their features.This further implies that some cross-linguistic effects do not exist at the initial stage of development, but may emerge gradually in the course of second language (L2) development in accordance with the expansion of L2 lexicon and the number of lexical items to be placed in the sentence structure. With these considerations, the Minimalist Program provides us with a new framework for explaining data concerning the L2 acquisition of non-null subjects in English, especially the developmental changes of interlanguage grammar and L1 influences on it.