In this talk I look at some results of a test of grammaticality judgements by native and English L1 speakers of Hungarian. The main focus of the talk is the status of optional, quasi-optional, and categorical rules of Hungarian and how they are represented in native and non-native grammars at different levels of proficiency.
My results show that learners at a high level of proficiency can indeed make native-like judgements of grammaticality in related syntactic constructions. However, I will be also showing some evidence of optionality in non-native grammars, especially at lower levels of proficiency as well as at the near-native level, particularly where the target language is less robust and therefore more ambiguous. I will argue that non-native optionality can either be the result of development or a consequence of the nature of the target language rule.
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