Indiana University Bloomington
Search:
 
Department of Second Language Studies  
German: Zweitsprachewerb  

Meet the Faculty

Rex A. Sprouse

Rex A. SprouseEducation:

Contact Information

rsprouse@indiana.edu
office: (812) 855-3248; cell: (812) 272-3332

Research Interests

Second language acquisition, structure and history of the languages of Western Europe (Germanic, Romance, Celtic), syntactic theory, language contact

Personal Statement:

The primary goal of my research is to gain a better understanding of the adult second language paradox: Why is that adults exposed to a nonnative language develop systems of linguistic knowledge of a startlingly rich and complex nature, including properties for which there is little or no evidence in the input, while still (in a large percentage of cases) experiencing significant difficulty in the acquisition and use of relatively “simple” features of word choice and form? I am best known in second language studies for proposing (together with Bonnie D. Schwartz, University of Hawaii) the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis and for pioneering (together with Laurent Dekydtspotter, Indiana University) research on the syntax-semantics interface in English-French interlanguage. I am currently investigating a re-conceptualization of Full Transfer in terms of relexification/relabeling in the sense that Claire Lefebvre (Université du Québec à Montréal) has used these terms to describe creole genesis. I am also considering ways in which the Language Instinct becomes “blunted” over the course of the life span, even though the fundamental architectures of grammars and processing mechanisms remain untouched.

Additional topics that have captured my interest over the years include case and agreement in German and Icelandic, perfect auxiliary selection in Romance and Germanic, the comparative correlative construction in German, the syntax of ditransitive verbs in the Germanic languages, and the development of tag questions in Welsh.

Courses Recently Taught:

Book

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Audrey Liljestrand (eds.) (2005), Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA) 7, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Thaddeus G. Meyer. (2005) Was für N interrogatives and quantifier scope in English-German interpretation. In Laurent Dekydtspotter, Rex A. Sprouse & Audrey Liljestrand (eds.), Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA) 7, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 86-95.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Bonnie D. Schwartz, Rex A. Sprouse & Audrey Liljestrand (2005) Evidence for the C-domain in early Interlanguage. In Susan Foster-Cohen, María del Pilar García-Mayo & Jasone Cenoz (eds.), EuroSLA Yearbook 5, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 7-34.

Roehrs, Dorian, Rex A. Sprouse & Joachim Wermter (2002) The difference between desto and umso: Some mysteries of the German Comparative Correlative. Interdisciplinary Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 7: 15-25.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Kimberly A.B. Swanson (2001) Reflexes of the mental architecture in second language acquisition: The interpretation of discontinuous combien extractions in English-French interlanguage. Language Acquisition 9: 175-227.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent & Rex A. Sprouse (2001) Mental design and (second) language epistemology: Adjectival restrictions of wh-quantifiers and tense in English-French interlanguage. Second Language Research 17: 1-35.

Schwartz, Bonnie D. & Rex A. Sprouse (2000) When syntactic theories evolve: Consequences for L2 acquisition research. In John Archibald (ed.), Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory, Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 156-186.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Rachel Thyre (1999/2000) The interpretation of quantification at a distance in English-French interlanguage: Domain-specificity and second language acquisition. Language Acquisition 8: 265-320.

Sprouse, Rex A. & Barbara Vance (1999) An explanation for the decline of null pronouns in certain Germanic and Romance languages. In Michel DeGraff (ed.), Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 257-284.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Bruce Anderson (1998) Interlanguage A-bar dependencies: Binding construals, null prepositions, and Universal Grammar. Second Language Research 14: 341-358.

Sprouse, Rex A. (1998) Some notes on the relationship between inflectional morphology and parameter setting in first and second language acquisition. In Maria-Luise Beck (ed.), Morphology and its Interfaces in L2 Knowledge (Language Acquisition & Language Disorders, vol. 19), Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 41-67.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Rex A. Sprouse & Bruce Anderson (1997) The interpretive interface in L2 acquisition: The process-result distinction in English-French interlanguage grammars. Language Acquisition 6: 297-332.

Schwartz, Bonnie D. & Rex A. Sprouse (1996) L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model. Second Language Research 12: 40-72.

Maling, Joan & Rex A. Sprouse (1995) Structural case, specifier-head relations, and the case of predicate NPs. In Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen & Sten Vikner (eds.), Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol. 31), Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 167-186.

Schwartz, Bonnie D. & Rex A. Sprouse (1994) Word order and nominative case in non-native language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar: Papers in Honor of Kenneth Wexler from the 1991 GLOW Workshops (Language Acquisition & Language Disorders, vol. 8), Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 317-368.

Service to the Field