Want-to contraction in second language acquisition: An emergentist approach

We present an emergentist alternative to a classic phenomenon from the literature on Universal Grammar – the contrast in the acceptability of contraction in sentences such Who do you want to/wanna see? and Who do you want to/*wanna go? Earlier experimental work suggests that although this contrast is quite robust for native speakers, including children, it is frequently not respected by adult second language learners. We present the results of a psycholinguistic experiment to support the idea that the deficit manifested by second language learners is due to their propensity to resolve wh dependencies at the matrix verb, regardless of its properties, thereby suppressing the potential for a contrast between the two want patterns.