Abstract

A growing body of Second Language acquisition studies has revealed that the acquisition of some grammatical structures can be accelerated when taught. Doughty (1991), Eckman, Bell and Nelson (1988), Hamilton (1994) and Gass (1982) showed that the acquisition of relative clauses is accelerated if learners are taught the most marked relativization types first. The present study targeted relativization and examined the Markedness Generalisation Hypothesis (MGH) that was generated from the studies mentioned above. The first research question addressed was: Do the students who get instructed on relative clauses perform better than those who do not get any of that instruction? Previous research about relative clause acquisition suggested that the generalisation accruing from the instructed marked relativization is "unidirectional", towards the less marked and implicated contexts only. However, many exceptional achievements were found. Some subjects showed some instances of generalisation to the unimplicated contexts. This motivated the second and third research questions which sought to find whether the generalisation is unidirectional or bidirectional. The final part of the present study dealt with the applicability of the MGH in the Tunisian context. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)