Chapter 4. Investigating the complementiser that in the verb complementation of Black South African English

This chapter explores the constraints that play a role in Black South African English (BSAfE) as a second-language (L2) variety of English in terms of the that /Ø-alternation in the verb complementation patterns of BSAfE. Previous research suggests that cross-linguistic influence (CLI) has a significant effect on this feature in BSAfE. This chapter aims to determine how CLI relates to other psycholinguistic and sociocognitive constraints. While BSAfE as an L2 variety demonstrates a lower rate of Ø-complementation than the first-language variety (L1), the findings of this study suggest that the importance of CLI may have been overstated in the literature, and shared constraints operate in both varieties in similar ways.