This article re-examines the morphology/functional category debate in the light of
empirical data drawn from the author’s longitudinal study of two
intermediate learners of French as a second language (L2). It argues that
inflectional deficits -which appear both as nonfinite verbs and as other
morphological errors in the interlanguage data -support neither a codependence of
syntax and morphology (Eubank, 1993/94) nor a gradual structure-building of L2
functional categories (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1998a, 1998b). The French data
rather indicate that deficiencies in morphological mapping, not defective syntax
(functional categories), are the cause of L2 failed inflection (Schwartz and
Sprouse, 1996; Lardière, 1998). The data also support the claim that L2
morpholexical characteristics - the most prone to cross-linguistic variation - are
more difficult to master than syntactic differences (Herschensohn, 2000). The first
section reviews the theoretical issues, discussing the morphology/functional
category link in L1 and then in L2 acquisition. The second section presents relevant
data on infinitival forms and other errors from the author’s study. The
third section discusses the data, arguing that the infinitival forms of intermediate
grammars are not ‘root infinitives’ such as those seen in early
stages of L1 acquisition, but rather examples of defective inflection.
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