Universal Grammar, transfer and variability: a case study

Resumen

This paper examines the English interlanguage of an adult Spanish advanced subject. It is tried to show here how his variable performance in spontaneous conversation and grammaticality judgements with respect to certain core grammar aspects may reflect a non native competence based both on his first language grammatical competence and new language rule construction capabilities. Supposedly native clustering parametrical properties appear to be learned separately, some of them requiring negative evidence to be fixed.