Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics XXIII, 2, 69-79, e-ISSN 2392-8093, ISSN-L 2069-9239 DOI: 10.31178/BWPL.23.2.4 ACQUISITION OF PREPOSITION STRANDING AND PIED-PIPING IN WH-QUESTIONS BY ADVANCED LEVEL TURKISH EFL LEARNERS Burcin Yapıcı * Abstract: The study investigated the preference of Turkish EFL learners for preposition stranding and pied-piping in constructing wh-questions and whether they experience problems in the acquisition of null-preposition constructions. A 15-item elicited production test was given to 43 Turkish learners with an advanced English proficiency level. The participants were asked to make wh-questions out of the words that were put in mixed order. The results showed that there was no significant difference between preposition stranding and pied-piping in their preferences in constructing wh-questions; however, they erroneously omitted the prepositions in wh-questions. The results did not provide enough evidence to support the hypothesis that L1 transfer was responsible for the preference for preposition stranding or pied-piping and null-preposition constructions in wh-questions. Keywords: preposition stranding, pied-piping, wh-questions, EFL, L1 transfer 1. Introduction This paper is concerned with the way Turkish learners of English as a Foreign Language (henceforth EFL) learners acquire structures involving preposition stranding (PS) and pied-piping (PIP) in wh-questions. PS occurs in English when prepositions are stranded in wh-questions (1a). English permits the movement of the preposition with the wh-phrase as well, which accounts for the PIP construction illustrated in (1b). (1) Every sentence begins with a capital letter. a. Which letter does every sentence begin with? b. With which letter does every sentence begin? Although English allows both PS and PIP, there are other languages (such as Turkish, Japanese and Persian) that do not allow PS. Second language (henceforth L2) learners of English whose native language (L1) lacks PS show a preference for this type of structure. The present study extends the investigation to L2 English in an L1 Turkish context and aims to find out the preference of Turkish learners of English for PS or PIP constructions in wh-questions. L2 learners of English can also go through a “null preposition” stage when they omit the preposition in PS constructions (as in 2). (2) *Which school do you go __? The present paper also investigates to what extent advanced Turkish EFL learners omit prepositions in wh-questions of English. * Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, burcinyapici@osmaniye.edu.tr.