All acquisition begins with the projection of a bare verb phrase

One of the main conclusions that we (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994) make in regard to the second language (L2) German development of uninstructed Korean and Turkish adults was the resemblance of their morphosyntactic development to that of the German children under study at the time by Harald Clahsen and colleagues (see, e.g.,Clahsen, Eisenbeiss,&Vainikka, 1994; Clahsen&Penke, 1992). Data from these L2 learners also indicated initial transfer of the headedness of their native language verb phrases (VPs), a claim then strengthened by research on L2 learners whose first language (L1) headedness differed from German, namely, Italian and Spanish (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1996).