Does missing verbal inflection reflect the absence of TP in L2 grammar?

Abstract

This article reports on an experiment which investigated L2 syntactic knowledge of the Tense Phrase (TP) projection by Korean adult learners of English. The results from cross-sectional data obtained by 183 Korean college students provide compelling evidence for the presence of the TP projection. With their frequent use of uninflected verbs, they produced various substitute forms for finite inflected verbs as defective ones. Also, the errors regarding V-raising, ellipsis of subject or verb and the nominative case were close to zero in all groups although the errors regarding tense or agreement inflection were much more. Finally, both inflected and uninflected forms were used in the same context. These findings provide evidence for extended phrase structure of functional categories despite deficient morphological production caused by difficulties in realizing overt inflectional morphology.