The development of plural marking and plural agreement in child English L2 acquisition

![CDATA[This chapter aims to examine grammatical development, focusing on morphological plural marking –s on nouns and NP (Noun Phrase) plural agreement, in child English as a second language (L2) acquisition based on Processability Theory (PT). Plural marker –s on nouns is predicted to emerge at stage 2 in PT, since it only requires lexical procedure, namely, form variation of one constituent. In contrast, NP plural agreement is claimed to occur at stage 3, as it requires phrasal procedure, that is, exchange of grammatical information between two constituents. However, the developmental sequence of English L2 plural marking and plural agreement predicted in PT has been recently challenged by claiming that phrasal plural agreement with numerals emerges before lexical plural marker –s. Hence, the current study addresses this issue with fresh evidence from a two-year longitudinal case study of a Japanese L1 primary school aged child acquiring English as L2 in Australia.]]