The Semantic Acquisition of the Universal Quantifier ‘every’ by Korean Adult L2 Learners of English

Eun-Jeong Kim, Second Language Studies

Between the ages of three and five, children learning English as their L1 seem to go through a stage where their interpretation of the universal quantifier every often differs from that of adult speakers. English-speaking children are claimed to interpret sentences such as Every boy is riding an elephant as requiring that each boy is riding an elephant and that each elephant is being ridden by a boy, in contrast with the adult native speaker requirement only that each boy is riding an elephant. This non-target interpretation of children has been termed “quantifier spreading”. Recently, DelliCarpini (2003) in a pilot study explored whether or not L2 adult learners of English would exhibit a quantifier spreading stage like L1 children. DelliCarpini’s results showed that L2 learners from mixed L1 backgrounds also exhibited quantifier spreading errors. Based on this she argued that the acquisition of L2 quantification is governed by Universal Grammar, with developmental stages that parallel L1 acquisition. The present study attempts to verify DelliCarpini’s preliminary findings by replicating her study, but using subjects with a homogeneous L1 background – Korean. In this study, although Korean participants did misinterpret sentences containing every, the results do not support the claim that the semantic acquisition of quantified sentences is constrained by Universal Grammar. In addition, it is found that Korean L2 adults make errors arising from L1 interference. Finally, this study reports that adult native speakers of English also produce inconsistent responses to some sentences containing the universal quantifier.