This dissertation investigates the nature of interlanguage (IL) grammars L1 English speakers construct when faced with L2 Russian multiple wh-questions.

The L1 English and the L2 Russian differ in the range of permissible wh-questions as well as the order of wh-elements in a sentence to a great extent. Whereas only one wh-word is fronted in English, in Russian multiple wh-questions, all wh-words have to move to at least preverbal position. In addition, in contrast to English, Russian has no constraints on the order of wh-words in the sentence relative to each other. Different ordering of wh-words, in turn, results in a distinction in presupposition and focus.

The data are collected from advanced English-speaking learners of Russian in three tasks addressing separate issues. In experiment 1 the subjects are to construct all possible grammatical multiple wh-questions out of set of cards each of which contains one word. In the next task the subjects are to rate the acceptability of given sentences thus providing insight into their intuitions about grammaticality of L2 Russian multiple wh-questions. The last exercise tests whether L2 learners are able to grasp the pragmatic differences in questions expressed by the order of wh-elements.

The results demonstrate that IL grammars exhibit both L1-English- and L2-Russian-like multiple wh-questions. IL grammars also demonstrate patterns that are attributable to neither English nor Russian but are characteristic of other primary languages. The difference in presupposition and focus is grasped but not in a target-like manner.