Abstract

Based on the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH), the current study aims at investigating L1 Thai learners’ acquisition of the wh-operator movement in English open interrogatives. The two primary objectives included: (1) to explore whether the wh-operator movement in English can be acquired by L1 Thai learners; and (2) to account for the data of the FFFH. Due to the non-existence of the strong uninterpretable [uwh] feature in Thai, it is hypothesized that L1 Thai learners of English fail to acquire English open interrogatives by means of the operator movement and that a variability in English open interrogatives is evident in both production and perception. A Question Formation Task (QFT) and a Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT) were administered to twenty intermediate and twenty advanced L1 Thai learners. The findings reveal that, in spite of their low suppliance rates of resumptive pronouns in the QFT, both L2 groups persistently failed to detect the presence of resumptive pronouns in the GJT, with rejection rates that were remarkably lower than those of the native controls. Furthermore, they seemed to produce or accept open interrogatives irrespective of the presence of resumptive pronouns, probably owing to the optional pronoun retention in Thai. In addition, an asymmetry between subject extraction and object extraction was found, possibly owing to processing difficulties posed by the former. The study, therefore, concludes that L1 Thai learners cannot acquire the wh-operator movement in English, driven by the strong uninterpretable [uwh] feature absent in Thai, thus lending vigorous support to the FFFH.