Second Language Acquisition of Presupposition, the case of ‘even’

Speakers routinely consider certain background assumptions to be shared between the conversation participants. Such background assumptions are known as presuppositions. In language, there are certain words or constructions that trigger presuppositions. This in-progress research explores second language (L2) acquisition of the presupposition trigger ‘even’ across English and Persian. The word ‘even’ has always been translated into ‘hatta’ in Persian. As such, one would expect the same presuppositions that ‘even’ have to hold in Persian. The goal of our research is twofold: We first argue, using semantic tests, which ‘even’ are semantically NOT the equivalent of ‘hatta’. These words differ in their presuppositional import. We then show results from experiments on second language learners of English and Persian that assess the extent to which these learners attain the semantics of these presupposition triggers in their second languages. This study also presents a test case for the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) in L2 acquisition which proposes that language acquisition involves, at earlier stages, the mapping of L1 feature representations onto L2 morpholexical items. Progressively, features are added/deleted, re-assembled, and reconfigured based on the L2 input. Accordingly, different predictions can be made for L2 learners at different stages. Our results have implications for theoretical, experimental, and applied linguistics, specifically in the fields of education and translation. These implications will be discussed.