L1 Thai Learners’ Acquisition of English WH-nominal Clauses

Abstract

This study examined L1 Thai learners’ acquisition of English WH-nominal clauses with a focus on three variables: grammaticality, WH-word function, and WH-clause position. The participants were 60 L1 Thai learners divided by their proficiency levels into two groups of 30: higher and lower proficiency. The research instruments comprised a grammaticality judgment task and a structured interview. It was hypothesized that the learners’ performance would be influenced by the three variables. The results revealed that grammaticality affected both participant groups, while WH-word function influenced only the less proficient learners. The grammaticality effect could be attributed to the learners’ limited knowledge and transfer of training. The impact of WH-word function appeared to involve the participants’ overgeneralization and interlingual factors. The absence of an effect for WH-clause position was assumed to stem from the learners’ application of distributional rules for nouns to WH-clauses. These findings contribute to the second language acquisition of English WH-nominal clauses and offer some pedagogical implications.