What's Missing from Missing Inflection?: Features in L2 Spanish

Accounts of second language (L2) morphological variability address the source of errors, differing over whether or not they follow from syntactic deficits. On both sides of the debate, the notion of 'default' has sometimes been employed in a post-hoc manner in addressing substitutions of one form for another. While it has been observed that learners do employ default forms, the morphemes that act as defaults form are not predicted by any of these theories. This paper attempts to address the morphology of defaults in a predictive way. Data come from spontaneous production in L2 Spanish across verbal & nominal domains. I argue that the choice of what can act as a default follows from a theory that assumes underspecification of morphological features in the L2 grammar. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the view that missing inflection is equivalent to missing overt marking, & argue for a feature-based account of variability. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document