Transferring strategies and the nature of transfer

I concentrate here on Adriana Belletti’s finding (2007, 2009a in particular) that different languages adopt different (but with a constrained variational pattern) strategies to answer the same question concerning the identification of the subject, and that answering strategies of the first language are characteristically transferred to a second language (Belletti & Leonini 2004; Belletti, Bennati & Sorace 2007). I outline a model in which transfer is an option occurring in the derivation when a formal property of a lexical item is not acquired. I assume that the acquisition of a lexical item functional structure and of its sound- meaning pair (Borer 2005) are dissociated, the latter preceding the former. I finally argue that transfer of strategies in L2 Italian is due to specific properties of pro not (yet) acquired.