This paper examines article use in the L2-English of adult and child speakers of Russian, an article-less language. In earlier work on articles in adult L2-English, Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) proposed that speakers of article-less L1s fluctuate between dividing English articles on the basis of definiteness vs. specificity, as a result of direct…

This study of first language Russian children acquiring English as a Second Language investigates the reasons behind omission of verbal inflection in second language (L2) acquisition and argues for presence of functional categories in second language grammar. Shows that child L2 learners, while omitting inflection, almost never produce incorrect…