second language research Corresponding author: Despina Papadopoulou, Department of Linguistics, School of Philology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54 124 Thessaloniki, Greece Email: depapa@lit.auth.gr Case morphology and word order in second language Turkish: Evidence from Greek learners Despina Papadopoulou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Spyridoula Varlokosta and Vassilios Spyropoulos University of Athens, Greece Hasan Kaili and Sophia Prokou University of the Aegean, Greece Anthi Revithiadou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Abstract The optional use of morphology attested in second language learners has been attributed either to a representational deficit or to a ‘surface’ problem with respect to the realization of inflectional affixes. In this article we contribute to this issue by providing empirical data from the early interlanguage of Greek learners of Turkish. Three experiments have been conducted, a cloze task, a sentence picture matching task and an on-line grammaticality judgement task, in order to investigate case morphology and its interaction with word order constraints. The findings of all three experiments point towards a variable use of case morphology, which is also observed in previous studies of Turkish as a second language (L2). Moreover, they show clearly that the learners face difficulties with non-canonical word orders as well as with the interaction of word order constraints and Case. On the other hand, the learners performed well on verbal inflections. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the developmental patterns in the early stages of L2 acquisition cannot be attributed to a global lack of functional categories but rather Second Language Research XX(X) 1–33 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0267658310376348 slr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 16, 2016 slr.sagepub.com Downloaded from