On-line Processing of Passives in L1 and L2 Children Theodoros Marinis University of Reading 1. Introduction Research on first language (L1) acquisition has shown that typically developing children acquire a large part of morpho-syntax by the age of 4 (Guasti, 2002). Similarly, studies investigating how children process morpho-syntactic information have revealed that by the same age, their processing routines do not differ from those used by adults (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). However, there is one structure that seems to be problematic for L1 children even at a later age. Until the age of 6, L1 children make errors in the comprehension and production of passives. In contrast to the substantial literature on L1 acquisition, relatively few studies have investigated the acquisition of morpho-syntax in children acquiring a second language (L2). These have shown that at an early stage of development, L2 children show evidence of transfer from their L1 to the L2 (Haznedar, 1997; Unsworth, 2005), and their language abilities resemble those of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (Paradis, 2005). Finally, there is a controversy as to whether or not L2 children follow similar patterns of development to L1 children or L2 adults (Schwartz, 2006; Weerman, Bisschop, & Punt, 2003). The present paper addresses the issues above by investigating the acquisition and processing of passives in monolingual English children and Turkish-English L2 children using a novel on-line methodology. This can reveal not only how successfully children comprehend passives, but also whether or not they are able to make use of morphological cues when they process actives and passives in real-time. 1.1 Acquisition of Passives Studies on the acquisition of passives have shown that English monolingual children make errors in the comprehension and production of passives until the age of 6 years, and some sentence types seem to be more difficult than others. Maratsos et al. (1985) found that 4-5 year-old children have more difficulties in the comprehension and production of non-actional passives (e.g. with the verbs see, hear) than with actional passives (e.g. with the verbs comb, touch), and Horgan (1978) showed that monolingual English children comprehend and produce full passives (passives that include the by- phrase, e.g., The zebra was kissed by the camel) later than short passives lacking the by-phrase (e.g., The tree is broken). Interestingly, Horgan’s study also showed that early passives (e.g., The tree is broken) represent after-the-fact observations about states, i.e. they describe a state and not an event (e.g. The tree is broken is interpreted similarly to The tree is green). The difference between adjectival and verbal passives was further explored by Borer and Wexler (1987) who argued that the children’s errors are caused by an immature grammatical system. Verbal passives (e.g., The zebra was kissed by the camel) involve movement and A-chains, whereas adjectival passives are base generated, and do not involve movement. According to Borer & Wexler, young children cannot comprehend and produce verbal passives because they are unable to form A-chains, and thus, they cannot assign the thematic role to the moved constituent. In contrast, they do not make errors with adjectival passives because these do not involve movement and A-chains. Borer & Wexler suggested that the formation of A-chains is subject to maturation, and the mechanism responsible for the formation of A-chains does not mature until at least the age of 5 to 6 years. Borer & Wexler’s account and the findings from earlier research have been challenged by Pinker, Lebeaux & Frost (1987) who showed that in spontaneous speech 3-year-old English children produce © 2007 Theodoros Marinis. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), ed. Alyona Belikova et al., 265-276. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.