No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Missing Surface Inflection or Impairment in Second Language Acquisition? Evidence from Tense and Agreement
Abstract
In this article, two accounts of the variable use of inflection in adult second language (L2) acquisition are examined. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) proposes that L2 learners have unconscious knowledge of the functional projections and features underlying tense and agreement. However, learners sometimes have a problem with realization of surface morphology, such that they resort to non-finite forms (e.g. Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997; Prévost and White, 1999). The Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) claims that L2 inflection is essentially impaired, due to lack of functional categories, features or feature strength (e.g. Eubank, 1993/94; Meisel, 1997). These views make different predictions for adult L2 acquisition. Spontaneous production data from two adult learners of French and two adult learners of German are examined. The data show that finite forms do not occur in non-finite contexts, that learners exhibit syntactic reflexes of finiteness and that inflected forms largely show accurate agreement. These results suggest that adult L2 learners represent finiteness and agreement at an abstract level, rather than being impaired in this domain, supporting the MSIH.
... A handful of studies reported the influence of the L1 gender system on predictive L2 gender processing (e.g., Foucart & Frenck-Mestre, 2011;Lemmerth & Hopp, 2019;Paolieri et al., 2010;Sabourin & Stowe, 2008). Relatively, the influence of the knowledge of L2 lexical gender on predictive L2 gender processing has received more attention (see Clahsen & Felser, 2006;Grüter et al., 2012;Hopp, 2010Hopp, , 2013Hopp, , 2016Hopp, , 2018Prévost & White, 2000). Hence, most processing-based models of L2 predictive gender processing relied on individual differences associated with knowledge of lexical gender (see Clashen & Felser, 2006). ...
... Some previous studies argued that the ability to process L2 gender predictively is acquired only if gender is instantiated in the first language (see Grüter & Rohde, 2013;Hawkins, 2009). Others rejected the issue of representation and linked the L2 processing difficulty to individual-level factors (e.g., Clashen & Felser, 2006;Grüter et al., 2012;Hopp, 2018;Prévost & White, 2000). Moreover, our study reflects on the interaction between the morphosyntax of first and second languages by systematically exploiting the grammatical gender similarity between the L1 and L2. ...
... The processing-based account associates the L2 predictive gender processing difficulty to the variability in the L2 lexical access and to various individual and language-level factors. It holds the view that L2 grammars do not differ from native grammars in terms of representation and that the variability in processing L2 morphosyntax predictively follows from difficulties in mapping the target morphophonological forms to syntactic features in situations of real-time processing pressure (see Prévost & White, 2000). Related to this, the Weaker Link Hypothesis (see Gollan et al., 2008) assumes that individual difference in gender assignment obscures the possibility of using gender for prediction since non-target lexical gender leads to a prediction error, implying that lexical gender and grammatical aspects of gender have a causal relationship. ...
Previous studies on the use of morphosyntactic gender cues for linguistic prediction show that non-native speakers' use of grammatical gender information is influenced by various factors. In the present study, we examined the influence of differential cross-linguistic influence (DCLI), knowledge of L2 lexical gender, gender congruency, and L2 fluency. To this end, we investigated L1 Oromo L2 Amharic speakers as well as L1 Amharic speakers, using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) and supplementary offline experiments. We investigated two groups of L2 Amharic speakers, i.e., L1 Eastern Oromo L2 Amharic and L1 Western Oromo L2 Amharic speakers. The Eastern Oromo dialect patterns with Amharic in terms of gender agreement unlike the Western Oromo dialect which does not have grammatical gender. Analyses of the participants' proportion of eye fixations show that early exposure to the gendered Eastern Oromo dialect facilitates predictive L2 gender processing. L2 fluency, the speakers' knowledge of L2 lexical gender and specific properties of the gender cues modulate predictive L2 gender processing. However, there is no significant influence of lexical gender congruency. The study has ecological significance as it presents empirical data from understudied languages.
... This study employed a combination of students' written essays and interviews with students to obtain insights into how students attended to the two target inflectional morphemes in the process of EFL writing. Most studies of this type have tended to draw exclusively on the performance data (e.g., Akbaş & Ölçü-Dinçer, 2021;Altarawneh & Hajjo, 2018;Blom et al., 2012;Hsieh, 2009;Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Lardiere, 2017;Prévost & White, 2000;Qi, 2022). In the present study, learners' voices helped unpack their process of making meaning and attending to language forms in written language production. ...
... Another theoretical model which is relevant to the focus of the present study is the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Prévost & White, 2000). It is a morphosyntactically-oriented theoretical stance which posits that the target inflectional morpheme is present in the L2 learners' grammar, but that the difficulty or omission of it is due to the problem of mapping the abstract features of the target inflection to their surface forms (Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Lardiere, 2017;Prévost & White, 2000). ...
... Another theoretical model which is relevant to the focus of the present study is the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Prévost & White, 2000). It is a morphosyntactically-oriented theoretical stance which posits that the target inflectional morpheme is present in the L2 learners' grammar, but that the difficulty or omission of it is due to the problem of mapping the abstract features of the target inflection to their surface forms (Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Lardiere, 2017;Prévost & White, 2000). It is this mapping challenge that hypothetically causes L2 learners to omit the inflectional morpheme where it is required, especially when they are under communicative pressure (Prévost & White, 2000). ...
The present research explored how Vietnamese EFL third-year students used the inflectional morpheme –s marking plural nouns (PN–s) and the third-person singular in the present tense (3SG–s) in opinion essays. 32 students each wrote an opinion essay about the topic of Facebook within 45 minutes as a progress test. The collected essays were analyzed for the use of PN–s and 3SG–s. 10 of the students who had completed their writing task were subsequently interviewed in an in-depth semi-structured format. The results revealed that students used PN–s and 3SG–s correctly in most of the obligatory contexts. Yet they used PN–s more accurately than 3SG–s. Omission was the most common error students made, and they omitted 3SG–s at a higher rate than PN–s. In view of the plural morpheme, omission of the orthographical plural variant –s was significantly higher than that of –es and of –ies. Incorrect use rarely occurred. But when it did, it was only found with PN–s, which also had a higher rate of oversuppliance than 3SG–s. In the interviews, the students reported having explicit knowledge about the target morphemes, but different factors related to the meaning-making process involved in essay writing contributed to omission or misuse. The study offers important pedagogical implications for writing instruction and teacher feedback that enhance the use of the target morphemes in written language production.
... In bilingual children, there is indirect evidence for the link between production and comprehension: bilingual children err more than monolinguals in case-marking production Meir & Janssen, 2021;Schwartz & Minkov, 2014), as well as show reduced case-marking comprehension (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020;Gagarina & Klassert, 2018;Janssen & Meir, 2019). On the other hand, there is evidence for a dissociation between production and comprehension (Grimm et al., 2011;Hendriks & Koster, 2010) that supports the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000). For example, bilinguals can be sensitive to ungrammaticalities on par with monolinguals while still making considerable production errors (Blom et al., 2016;Chondrogianni & Marinis, 2012). ...
... As per the Prediction-by-Production Account (Pickering & Gambi, 2018), if bilingual children show low accuracy in production of the ACC case, then they will not use the ACC case cue predictively in comprehension. Alternatively, if there is a dissociation between production and comprehension (Grimm et al., 2011), bilingual children may make errors in production of the ACC case, yet they will reliably use case morphology in comprehension; this will in turn support the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000). ...
... Finally, our fourth research question addressed a connection between production and predictive processing in on-line comprehension. The Prediction-by-Production Account (Pickering & Gambi, 2018;Pickering & Garrod, 2013) posits tight links between production and prediction, whereas the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000) suggests that despite lower production skills, bilinguals might be on par with monolinguals in comprehension. We propose that our two pieces of evidence combined point to a likely productionprediction dissociation and support the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. ...
The Unified Competition Model (MacWhinney, 2012) accounts for crosslinguistic differences in thematic role mapping. We investigated production and predictive use of accusative case morphology in Russian-Hebrew bilingual children. We also investigated the role of production in predictive processing testing the Prediction-by-Production Account (Pickering & Garrod, 2018) vs. the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000). Three groups of children aged 4–8 participated: Russian-Hebrew-speaking bilinguals, Russian-speaking and Hebrew-speaking monolingual controls. All children participated in the accusative case production and Visual-World eye-tracking comprehension experiments. Bilinguals were tested in both of their languages. The results of the study confirmed the predictions of the Unified Competition Model showing typological differences in the strength of the case-marking cue and its predictive use in sentence processing in Russian- and Hebrew-speaking controls. While Russian-speaking monolinguals relied on case marking to predict the upcoming agent/patient, the performance of Hebrew-speaking monolingual children varied. The findings for bilinguals showed that despite their lower production accuracy in both languages, they were either indistinguishable from monolinguals or showed an advantage in the predictive use of case morphology. The findings support the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, which predicts a dissociation between production and comprehension.
Keywords: sentence processing, prediction, Russian, Hebrew, case morphology, Visual-World, Visual-World paradigm (eye-tracking)
... Children are capable of successfully acquiring an L1 despite their cognitive abilities not having fully developed, yet adult learners continue to struggle with acquiring an L2 even with fully developed non-linguistic cognitive abilities. For example, this difficulty has been seen with L2 morphosyntax even at advanced proficiency levels (Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016;Hopp, 2010;Prévost & White, 2000). While we acknowledge that there is variability in who masters an L2 (i.e., some individuals can achieve high proficiency in an L2; Birdsong & Molis, 2001;Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2000), for the purpose of this section we consider the study of language acquisition as often divided into first language acquisition and second language acquisition. ...
... These processes are many, including access, inhibition, and selection. For SLA, L2 variability can be attributed to issues of retrieving relevant L2 knowledge (Prévost & White, 2000) and/or deficits in the ability to form nativelike L2 representations (Hawkins & Chan, 1997). In contrast, aphasia has predominantly been viewed from a retrieval, not representational, deficit perspective (Mirman & Britt, 2014). ...
... Morphology is an important aspect of language learning because it deals with the formation and processing of words, the basic building blocks of phrases, sentences, and, ultimately, discourse. Much research on the acquisition of morphology focuses on inflectional morphology (within category word-formation; Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016;Hopp, 2010;López Prego & Gabriele, 2014;McCarthy, 2008;Prévost & White, 2000) and morphological decomposition (word processing; Fiorentino et al., 2014;Münte et al., 1999). Inflectional morphology consists of affixes that provide grammatical information to the word. ...
The understanding of how individuals learn a second language (L2) may be informative to the understanding of how persons with aphasia (PWA) re-learn or rehabilitate impaired language processes. The purpose of this review is to draw connections between knowledge in second language acquisition (SLA) with aphasiology. We first provide a brief overview of SLA and compare the populations of L2 learners and persons with aphasia. We then provide a specific example application of SLA theory to aphasiology in the context of morphology. Finally, we discuss three additional considerations that must be accounted for when bridging SLA and aphasiology research: bi/multilingualism, individual differences in cognition, and language of study.
... Children are capable of successfully acquiring an L1 despite their cognitive abilities not having fully developed, yet adult learners continue to struggle with acquiring an L2 even with fully developed non-linguistic cognitive abilities. For example, this difficulty has been seen with L2 morphosyntax even at advanced proficiency levels (Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016;Hopp, 2010;Prévost & White, 2000). While we acknowledge that there is variability in who masters an L2 (i.e., some individuals can achieve high proficiency in an L2; Birdsong & Molis, 2001;Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2000), for the purpose of this section we consider the study of language acquisition as often divided into first language acquisition and second language acquisition. ...
... These processes are many, including access, inhibition, and selection. For SLA, L2 variability can be attributed to issues of retrieving relevant L2 knowledge (Prévost & White, 2000) and/or deficits in the ability to form nativelike L2 representations (Hawkins & Chan, 1997). In contrast, aphasia has predominantly been viewed from a retrieval, not representational, deficit perspective (Mirman & Britt, 2014). ...
... Morphology is an important aspect of language learning because it deals with the formation and processing of words, the basic building blocks of phrases, sentences, and, ultimately, discourse. Much research on the acquisition of morphology focuses on inflectional morphology (within category word-formation; Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016;Hopp, 2010;López Prego & Gabriele, 2014;McCarthy, 2008;Prévost & White, 2000) and morphological decomposition (word processing; Fiorentino et al., 2014;Münte et al., 1999). Inflectional morphology consists of affixes that provide grammatical information to the word. ...
... The missing surface inflectional hypothesis (MSIH) that was a predecessor to the FRH predicts that the feature system is temporarily impaired at the surface level because it may be arduous to map out the surface forms and underlaying abstract features, irrespective of the presence or the absence of a feature in an L1 (Lardiere, 1998(Lardiere, , 2000Prévost & White, 2000;De Garavito & White, 2002). The impairment is based on whether an L2 learner can identify and construct the complex mapping accurately. ...
... This concept conforms to the UG FT/FA (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994. Prévost and White (2000) mainly examined the missing surface form hypothesis. Prévost and White (2000) collected data in the form of the spontaneous production of two adult French learners and two adult German learners. Prévost and White collected spontaneous production data from two adult French learners and two adult German learners. ...
... This concept conforms to the UG FT/FA (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994. Prévost and White (2000) mainly examined the missing surface form hypothesis. Prévost and White (2000) collected data in the form of the spontaneous production of two adult French learners and two adult German learners. Prévost and White collected spontaneous production data from two adult French learners and two adult German learners. ...
This dissertation explores first language (L1) transfer and second language (L2) transfer processes and models, such as the full transfer/full access model (FT/FA), the representational deficit/interpretability hypothesis, and the feature reassembly hypothesis (FRH). The typological proximity model (TPM), the cumulative enhancement model (CEM), the L2 status factor model (L2SFM), and the linguistic proximity model (LPM) are L2 transfer models explored. Evidence produced from previous studies on L1 transfer is not conclusive concerning verbal agreement because the investigated languages exhibit tense or verbal agreement. No language such as Indonesian was investigated that lacks agreement and tense. This is the important reason for conducting this dissertation research on Arabic third language (L3) participants with different language pairings. Indonesian exhibits neither verbal agreement nor tense features to isolate the processing of verbal agreement from tense. The reason for selecting the Turkish language was related to the fact that Turkish native speakers realize various types of verbal agreement and tense in their own language, similar to Arabic. Spontaneous data were collected from 86 participants divided into eight groups of Arabic L3 proficiency: beginner, intermediate, advanced, and near-native (four groups for each Indonesian and Turkish L1 participants). The data produced mixed evidence. Based on L1 factor alone, there was hardly any statistically significant difference between the two L1 groups. Significant differences obtained when proficiency alone or the interaction between L1 and proficiency was considered. Some Turkish L1 participants were found to outperform the L1 Indonesian participants and some L1 Indonesian participants were found to outperform the L1 Turkish participants on some target forms. Motivation seems to be at play in the case of the Indonesian groups, and taken together with the role of L1 transfer, can account for the full range of the data. These statistical differences add to the findings of earlier Arabic research in the literature. Regarding near-nativeness, there were numerous instances of participants who achieved the highest ceiling level (100%) and were able to perform on various target forms, suggesting that full Arabic proficiency is achievable. The results provide partial support for the FT/FA model. Based on how the research participants performed, it is possible that no language transfer model can adequately explain the results. However, L1 transfer hypotheses and L2 transfer models provide some explanations for the L1 group performances of the two L1s. The dissertation findings have implications for four important groups (students, teachers, authors, and Arabic second language acquisition researchers) primarily concerned with language acquisition and those who struggle with learning Arabic as an L2 or L3.
... The study's goal is (i) to uncover the type of knowledge that BP native speakers acquiring L2 Spanish possess of DOM in their L2, and (ii) to determine whether their knowledge of DOM in the L2 is modulated by their L2 productive vocabulary knowledge. Our research questions and hypotheses are guided by previous proposals on second language acquisition: the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2008(Lardiere , 2009, the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz 1997;Prévost and White 2000), and the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1996). These previous works allow us to hypothesize on the acquisition process that L1 BP speakers go through when acquiring DOM in Spanish, namely the role of L1 transfer (e.g., omission and overextension) and variability in morphological competence in production. ...
... The research questions of the present study are guided by three proposals on L2 acquisition: Lardiere's (2008Lardiere's ( , 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH), the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (FT/FA; Schwartz and Sprouse 1996), and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997;Prévost and White 2000). The FRH assumes that acquiring a language is a process in which learners select a subset of features among all the features available across languages and match those features with morphology. ...
... The MSIH (Haznedar and Schwartz 1997;Prévost and White 2000) also emphasizes the difficulty that L2 learners encounter when acquiring functional morphology, particularly in production. This hypothesis suggests that, even though L2 learners have underlying knowledge of functional categories and features, they often lack the surface morphology in L2 and that is why they are absent in production. ...
Differential object marking (DOM) in Spanish refers to the overt morphological marking of certain direct objects. Specifically, this a-marking of direct objects is driven by animacy and usually precedes human objects. Other features such as specificity and definiteness matter to a lesser extent. This direct object a-marking has also been attested in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), but with more restrictions than in Spanish. Thus, BP is typically not considered a DOM language. This article discusses the acquisition of DOM in second language (L2) Spanish among BP speakers. Seventy-four adult Brazilians with various levels of L2 proficiency completed three experimental tasks: elicited production, acceptability, and productive vocabulary knowledge, which measures productive lexical knowledge and was designed specifically to assess this language pair. We analyzed our data to uncover the knowledge that BP-speaking L2 learners of Spanish possess of DOM and to determine whether their knowledge of DOM can be predicted by their L2 productive vocabulary knowledge. Results indicate that the learners acquire the animacy-driven nature of Spanish DOM, both in their productive and receptive grammatical knowledge, as their productive vocabulary knowledge increases. The L2 learners present different acquisitional outcomes yet those with deeper productive vocabulary knowledge show a stronger animacy-driven distribution of DOM in Spanish.
... The Computational Difficulty Approach attributes poor performance, at least in part, to performance failures. For example, the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Prévost & White, 2000) argues that errors in morphology production do not necessarily indicate impaired syntax, aligning with the theory of distributed morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993). This view notes the influence of the learners' L1 as one of the significant factors contributing to these performance failures (Grüter & Crago, 2011). ...
... In contrast, the Computational Difficulty Approach suggests that L2 learners can achieve target knowledge, but attributes poor performance to a Effects of L1 Transfer on the Interpretation of Korean Reflexive Pronouns by Advanced-Level L1-Chinese and L1-Azerbaijani Learners 17 failure to apply this knowledge due to various extraneous reasons. According to this view, the influence of the learners' L1 is particularly noted as a contributing factor to these performance failures (Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Prévost & White, 2000). If L1 transfer persists at an advanced level, as reported in the current study, some non-target-like performance by advanced L2 learners would not necessarily indicate a knowledge deficit; instead, it might suggest that a potential L1 effect accounts for any non-target-like performance among advanced learners. ...
The current study investigates whether first language (L1) transfer persists among second language (L2) learners with advanced proficiency. Specifically, the study examines the differences in interpretation of the Korean reflexives caki and caki-casin in bi-clausal sentences between adults with L1 backgrounds in Chinese and Azerbaijani, both of whom have advanced L2 proficiency in Korean. In Chinese, similar to Korean, there is a monomorphemic reflexive that allows for a long-distance antecedent, as well as a polymorphemic reflexive that favors a local antecedent. On the other hand, Azerbaijani only has a monomorphemic reflexive that is locally bound in bi-clausal sentences. A total of 47 L1-Chinese adults and 21 L1-Azerbaijani adults, all of whom have achieved TOPIK level 5 or 6, completed a Truth Value Judgment Task to assess their interpretation patterns of reflexive pronouns in Korean. The results showed that L1-Azerbaijani adults exhibited a stronger inclination towards a local interpretation for the Korean reflexives compared to L1-Chinese adults, indicating the presence of L1 transfer among advanced level L2 learners.
... Therefore, lack of an abstract feature (e.g., gender) in the L1 can be made up and, critically, the process is not subject to maturational constraints. In these accounts the source of divergent development is not an inherent defectiveness (e.g., Clahsen & Hong, 1995) but an occasional failure to accessing abstract representations due to processing restrictions (e.g., Missing Surface Inflectional Hypothesis; Prévost & White, 2000) or incomplete assembly of L2 morphology (Lardiere 1998;2000). The above approaches have long been debated by models attempting to account for incomplete acquisition even in end-state grammars (e.g., see for gender Franceschina, 2001;2005). ...
... Similar results were also reported in a number of studies (see Section 3). In processing terms, such performance could be the result of occasional failure to accessing abstract representations during the course of a demanding on-line task (Prévost & White, 2000). Moving to written production, an off-line process where the participant does not undergo processing overload, access to explicit knowledge and occasional monitoring over production (Krashen 1981) is likely to take place. ...
The paper presents the results of a study conducted on grammatical gender in the second language (L2). 196 written productions of Russian adult learners of Greek have served the exploration of the influence of the mother tongue (L1) both in lexical and syntactic terms. The data come from the Greek Learner Corpus II (GLCII) and the results have been contrasted to those reported by a previous experimental work with comparable design. Following such a methodological convergence we deliver evidence on the role of implicit and explicit grammar awareness and its impact on the learner's performance.
... In this perspective, L2 acquisition is associated with the task of reassembling features on functional categories and lexical items. In the course of this task, achieving target-like reassembly seems challenging, and deviant performance is often attributed to processing restrictions that impede form-to-meaning mapping (see also, Missing Surface Inflectional Hypothesis; Prévost and White 2000). Importantly for this study, the FRH acknowledges that non-target reassembly of the L2 features is not limited to their different instantiation in the L1, and that processing restrictions are held even in language pairs that share the same feature settings. ...
... Within the Generative tradition, scenarios A and B are accounted for by claiming the general issue of the accessibility of UG and the respective nature of the L1 and L2 (e.g., Clahsen and Muysken 1986;Bley-Vroman 1990;Beck 1998;Hawkins et al. 2004;Franceschina 2005). The third one is better accommodated within a framework that discusses the L2ers' performance on grammatical gender in the context of the limitations imposed by real-time use (e.g., Lardiere 1998;Prévost and White 2000;Clahsen and Felser 2006). This study provides evidence for the presence of the above formal features at both the lexical and syntactic levels in the developing grammars of Greek. ...
This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian learners of Greek. Agreement in Determiner-Noun (Det-N) and Adjective-Noun (Adj-N) dependencies is explored through eye-tracking registration in a reading-based design. Twenty-four intermediate learners read short texts embedded with agreement violations, and then responded to a comprehension task. The study implemented a two-level triangulation by drawing its stimuli from the Greek Learner Corpus II (GLCII) and contrasting, at a first level, the findings with comparable offline data that were previously obtained from the same corpus. The second level entailed a contrast between the online evidence and the offline data that were collected through a post-reading questionnaire right after the online eye-tracking session. This questionnaire explored whether longer fixations on agreement violations are associated with explicit awareness of the study’s focus. To anticipate the outcome of the study, the gender agreement data suggests that the abstract gender feature is present in the developing grammar of Russian learners of Greek. Moreover, the participants seem to effectively deal with the syntactic computations underlying nominal agreement, though efficacy varies across the structures that have been examined. Apart from this, certain suggestions are made considering the research paradigm followed.
... Morphosyntactic variation is regarded as a typical landmark during the acquisition of verbal inflection in the first and second language acquisition (cf. Rice et al., 1998;Lardiere, 2000;Prévost and White, 2000;Mao, 2020b;Chomsky, 2022). A testing ground for smooth morphosyntactic development in language acquisition is the investigation of how acquirers accurately operate the mechanism of Agree, based on the features encoded in verbal morphology and related lexical items. ...
... The L2 learners of Spanish (with comparatively low English proficiency 4 ) were undergraduate students at Soochow University. Before the formal experiment, only Chinese Spanish L2ers (not native Spanish speakers) were asked to complete a short proficiency test, which was taken from Child (2013) and had been widely used in L2 acquisition research (e.g., Montrul et al., 2008). The test included a multiple choice vocabulary section from a Modern Language Association test (30 items) and a cloze section from the advanced Diplomas de Espãnol como Lengua Extranjera (20 items). ...
Introduction
While phi-agreement and concord are suggested to differ in nature during the first language (L1) acquisition, the acquisition of adverb-verb TC and SV person/number agreement by Chinese Spanish second language (L2) learners has only received limited attention. The current study examined morphosyntactic processing by advanced Chinese Spanish L2 learners (L2ers), whose L1 lacks the explicit morphological marking of tense and phi-agreement.
Method
Chinese Spanish L2ers and native Spanish speakers were asked to complete a self-paced grammaticality judgment task, where the grammaticality of adverb-verb TC and SV person/number agreement as well as the adverb/subject-verb distance were manipulated.
Results
For both native Spanish speakers and L2ers, SV agreement violations are detected earlier and judged more accurately than adverb-verb TC violations. Furthermore, L2ers process SV number agreement less efficiently than SV person agreement (but as efficiently as adverb-verb TC). And there is no influence of the adverb/subject-verb distance on the processing of verbal inflection.
Conclusions
This study suggests that advanced Chinese Spanish L2ers tend to use native-like cognitive mechanisms for phi-agreement and concord computations, though their sensitivity to agreement violations may be further influenced by the morphosyntactic feature involved.
... Another influential hypothesis from the 'full access' strand is the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Prévost & White 2000; see also Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997). This hypothesis was proposed to counter the 'impairment' hypotheses such as Meisel (1997) mentioned above. ...
... Brooks conclude that implicit rule extraction is hindered by the complexity of the Russian case system (Kempe, Brooks, 2008). F. Prévost and L. White believe that foreigners have difficulty not in rule extraction but in their realization in speech, experiencing excessive cognitive load in communication (Prévost, White, 2000). ...
The task of creating innovative technologies for teaching Russian as a native, as a non-native and as a foreign language, taking into account the age of students, their cognitive abilities and features of the first language, is relevant. The solution of this problem requires a fundamental psycholinguistic study of the processes accompanying the formation of the language mechanisms of children and adults. The aim of this research is to specify the ideas about mastering the category of Russian case in various conditions of language acquisition. The method of comparative analysis of the processes of mastering Russian case in monolingualism, simultaneous child bilingualism, studying Russian as a foreign language and Russian language acquisition by a foreign-speaking child in the process of communication, was used. The material was collected during longitudinal observation of the speech of primary school students from St. Petersburg, who were native speakers of Turkic and Caucasian languages. The classification of errors in selecting and constructing case forms is proposed. The ways of access to the mental lexicon and the mechanisms of procedural grammar rules formation are described. The conclusion is that there is the imbalance between the cognitive and communicative development of a foreign child and the level of language proficiency, which leads to a detailed, but grammatically unformed statement, characteristic of a successive natural bilingual. When Russian-speaking child resorts to retrieving ready-made frameworks of prepositional case constructions from memory, the foreign child independently constructs them in speech, preferring to use basic and reduced forms. In the future, it is necessary to develop a unified toolkit for studying grammar mechanisms formation and to increase the empirical base of the study. The information about speech ontogenesis obtained as a result of the study must be taken into account for developing scientifically based methods of teaching Russian as a non-native language and as a foreign language.
... of the L2. This is in contrast to other L1-centred theories, which include pinpointing difficulties in, for example, the reassembly of features in the L1 and L2 (e.g., Lardiere 2008) or in mapping between L2 syntactic representation and surface morphology (e.g., Prévost and White 2000;Nguyen and Newton 2022), and also in contrast to theoretical frameworks that argue for a representational deficit in syntactic representation, such as the unavailability of uninterpretable features outside the L1 (e.g., Hawkins and Chan 1997;Hawkins and Liszka 2003). In L1 acquisition, Macken and Barton (1980) presented a seminal longitudinal study of the acquisition of voicing contrast in word-initial stops (e.g., /p/ versus /b/ initial words), measuring voice onset time (VOT). ...
The cause(s) of missing inflectional morphology in obligatory contexts by adult speakers of second language (L2) English is subject to ongoing discussion. Whatever the specific theory, however, the apparent asymmetrical production of the morpheme ‘-s’ in the marking of number on plural nouns versus that on third person singular agreement has to be accounted for. This study adopts the theoretical approach put forward by the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, whereby the prosodic representation of inflectional morphology in the first language (L1) can, to some extent, account for differences in the suppliance of inflectional morphology in L2 English within and across L1s. It is in this context that the production of third person singular agreement, and, for contrastive purposes, number on plural nouns, by L1 Bengali speakers of L2 English, is are considered in relation to available prosodic representation in the L1, as well as against phonological processes attested in L1 acquisition. More specifically, covert contrasts. An inspection of spectrograms from instances of the omission of inflection by L1 Bengali speakers of L2 English at Beginner to Intermediate proficiency levels does not, however, indicate that learners are covertly supplying agreement on the third person singular (or plural number on nouns). This finding does not necessarily rule out the occurrence of covert contrasts in L2 production of inflectional morphology; alternative techniques may detect a systematic difference between bare verbs and non-audible (to the listener) inflection.
... It establishes a link between the grammatical and lexical representations by proposing the same independent system at both the lexical and grammatical levels. Our finding also converges with the lexicalist models, which claim a strong linkage between the lexical and grammatical representations (see Blanco-Elorrieta and Caramazza 2021;Grüter et al. 2012;Prévost and White 2000). In sum, data from the Oromo bidialectal speakers suggest that bidialectal speakers are indistinguishable from bilingual speakers based on their lexical selection and representation mechanisms. ...
For decades, linguists have been working to formulate an objective means of distinguishing dialects from languages, but dialect recognition has largely remained to be a subjective enterprise. Only recently studies proposed a processing-based psycholinguistic approach towards dialect recognition (e.g., Melinger 2018, 2021). These studies argue that dialect words are stored as a co-dependent representation, not as an independent representation of words of bilingual speakers. Based on these studies, we investigated lexical selection and processing mechanisms of bilingual and bidialectal speakers of two underrepresented languages: Oromo and Amharic, using the picture-word interference paradigm. We found independent lexical representations both for the bilingual and the bidialectal groups which implies the involvement of the same cognitive mechanisms in both language and dialect processing. We argue that bidialectal speakers may have flexible lexical representation and selection mechanisms that are dependent on their previous language experience. Hence, we propose a dynamic lexical selection model that accommodates diverse dialect ecologies.
... Morpheme omission is a form of L2 grammar variability. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000) explains variability in oral production as a computational problem. In L2 speech, under communication pressure, the feminine form cannot be mapped to the relevant lexical form; thus, the masculine form is used as default. ...
This study investigated the effect of the first language
(L1) gender system on the second language (L2)
acquisition of verbal gender agreement in Standard
Arabic. It examined L2 learners from different L1
backgrounds, including English, Filipino, Urdu, and
Romance, which have varying gender systems. Urdu
and Romance have grammatical gender, whereas
English and Filipino do not. Urdu shares more
similarities with Arabic than Romance, as it requires
gender agreement on verbs, whereas Romance does
not. This study used an online grammaticality
judgment task to assess L2 accuracy of verbal gender
agreement across (un)grammatical conditions. The
results suggest that proficiency has a greater influence
on L2 learners’ accuracy than L1 background. The
results showed no significant differences in L2
accuracy among the L1 groups. These findings
challenge L1 transfer accounts, arguing that L1
transfer is domain-specific in gender agreement.
... Morpheme omission is a form of L2 grammar variability. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000) explains variability in oral production as a computational problem. In L2 speech, under communication pressure, the feminine form cannot be mapped to the relevant lexical form; thus, the masculine form is used as default. ...
... Overall, and as we see in many studies, learners perform significantly better with the copula as compared to other verbal inflections. These results were explained in terms of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Prévost & White, 2000), in which the problems are attributed to the surface morphology and not to their mental representation. ...
... Learners can present a deficit in inflectional morphology representation that can be explained by either a developmental problem in the interlanguage grammar, being overcome later on, or an endless deficiency (WHITE, 2003). Even though morphological information is acquired, sometimes, there is a breakdown in the connection of one part of the grammar to the other (HAZNEDAR; LARDIERE, 1998aLARDIERE, , 1998bLARDIERE, , 2000WHITE, 2000aWHITE, , 2000bROBERTSON, 2000). Thus, syntactic information seems to be more straightforward to be mastered than morphology. ...
This study aimed to delve into the role of working memory and proficiency concerning functional morphology in second language processing. We performed two tasks, an acceptability judgment with memory load and a 2-back, with higher and lower proficiency Brazilian Portuguese-English learners. We measured their proficiency level and investigated their performance in working memory capacity and inflectional morphology processing. The morphemes under investigation were the third-person singular (-s) and the regular past tense (-ed) in grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Our results indicate that neither working memory nor proficiency influenced their performance. These findings seem related to the allocation of attentional resources since they could not focus on the missing morphemes in the acceptability judgment task.
... Due to the absence of a receptive task, it was not feasible to address HSs' and L2Ls' receptive knowledge of the use of preterit morphology with states, an important component of the FRH that would be necessary to test all facets of this hypothesis. HSs and L2Ls frequently show substantially stronger receptive knowledge of morphology when compared to variability that may emerge in production (Perez-Cortes et al., 2019, Prévost andWhite, 2000;Sherkina-Lieber, 2015;White et al., 2004). Consequently, future research could expand upon the findings in the present study by testing aspect morphology production with additional predicate classes, and by integrating a carefully-constructed interpretation task to tap HSs' and L2Ls' underlying knowledge. ...
The feature reassembly approach to second language acquisition research has been influential in laying the ground- work for recent theories of heritage languages. Lexical frequency has emerged as an important variable in recent stud- ies within a feature-oriented approach to heritage language acquisition, but the focus on frequency has not yet received considerable attention with second language learners. To determine whether lexical frequency affects both populations of bilinguals, 51 adult heritage speakers and 40 second language learners of Spanish carried out a production task con- cerning preterit aspect morphology with state verbs of varying frequency, which represents an area of the Spanish aspectual system that is challenging for bilingual populations to acquire. Heritage speakers and second language learn- ers were highly similar in their production tendencies: lower-proficiency speakers used the preterit with the least- frequent state verbs, while more proficient speakers in both groups showed less sensitivity to frequency, despite overall chance levels of preterit production. These findings extend recent research on Spanish as a heritage language by show- ing that second language learners are also influenced by frequency in their production of aspect morphology.
... However, an enduring challenge for second language learners is knowledge of morphology, be it case and gender marking on determiners and nouns, tense and aspect marking on verbs, or derivational morphology. Although work on these topics exists based on production data (e.g., Spinner & Juffs, 2008;Prévost & White, 2000), experimental techniques The use of case marking for predictive processing in second language Japanese. Bilingualism, Language,and Cognition,19(1), 19-35. ...
This chapter presents research methods that probe the linguistic knowledge and processing of adult second language learners and how that knowledge may change over time. This chapter describes acceptability judgement tasks, self-paced reading tasks, truth value judgement tasks, eye-tracking, and masked priming. Production data and corpora are briefly mentioned. The preparation of data for statistical analysis and the appropriate statistical models for interval and categorical variables are also discussed.
... However, they are somehow not able to access this knowledge in the same way in real time in a production task, which might imply that the divergence occurs at the processing level rather than at the representational level, as suggested in section 8.1.3. This dissociation between representation and processing (or competence and performance) is reminiscent of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Prévost & White, 2000), a theory about second language acquisition that maintains that L2 learners have intact knowledge of abstract grammatical features but run into processing problems when mapping these features onto their surface forms in production, causing them to resort to default forms. On this account, the claim would be that knowledge is indeed present (as evidenced by accuracy in judgment tasks), but that it is simply not always accessible during oral production. ...
This dissertation investigates Spanish heritage speakers (HSs) in the Netherlands, a relatively understudied population. The main aim is to investigate whether linguistic interfaces, especially the external interface between syntax and discourse-pragmatics, are particularly vulnerable in this population, as predicted by the Interface Hypothesis (IH) (Sorace, 2011; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). While much previous research has tested the IH by comparing two completely different phenomena (e.g., Montrul, 2008; Sorace & Serratrice, 2009), this dissertation compares interfaces within a single phenomenon, to keep possibly confounding variables (e.g., frequency or salience) constant. An additional objective of this dissertation is to explore several variables
external to the heritage language itself, such as age of onset and manner of acquisition, age at testing, task effects, the socio-linguistic circumstances of the host country, and cross-linguistic influence from the dominant language The target phenomena are mood and subject position, both of which can
have different functions, pertaining to different (interface and non-interface) domains, as will be explained in the following sections.
... One of the full access hypotheses, the Full Transfer/Full Transfer Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), asserts that «the learner's L1 grammar constitutes the initial state of L2 acquisition» (Diebowski, 2021: 76). Likewise, the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost and White, 2000), another full access proposal, claims that the L2 learner can attain a native-like knowledge despite the fact the acquisition has been done past the critical period. The full access proposals also contend that advanced learners can fail to associate syntactic properties with their correct morphological and phonological forms. ...
... In consequence, a main tenet of the approach is to provide a linguistic description of stages of interlanguage grammatical development. Finally, the research investigates the extent to which fossilization and divergent outcomes in L2 acquisition can be characterized in terms of learnability, for example, the L2 input provides ambiguous, insufficient, or misleading information preventing target-like acquisition, and in terms of learner difficulties in coordinating information across different language modules, for example, in mapping syntactic features to inflectional forms (e.g., Prévost & White, 2000) or in aligning syntactic and discourse constraints (e.g., Sorace, 2011). ...
Theory: The Cognition Hypothesis
Author: Peter Robinson
[To cite this excerpt, please use this information: Robinson, P. (2022).The cognition hypothesis and individual difference factors in SLA. In S. Li, P. Hiver, and M. Papi (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of SLA and individual differences (pp. 3–33). Chapter 1: Individual Differences in Second LanguageAcquisition:Theories,Research,and Pedagogy.NewYork:Routledge.]
Major Tenets of the Theory
The Cognition Hypothesis claims that pedagogic tasks should be sequenced from simple to complex (in instructional settings and syllabuses) in terms of their attentional, memory, reasoning, and other intrinsic cognitive resource demands, and that such sequencing will promote the develop- ment of the language needed to accomplish tasks, as well as the ability to successfully perform real-world tasks that pedagogic tasks are based on, outside classrooms, or other settings for second language (L2) instruction (Robinson, 2015). The Cognition Hypothesis distinguishes between resource-directing dimensions of task complexity, in which the cognitive demands tasks make (such as understanding and explaining why an event or series of events caused another event to occur) also direct attention to aspects of the second language that can be used to perform them (e.g., causal connectors “because”, “therefore”, linking conjoined clauses), and resource-dispersing dimensions of task complexity which increase attentional and other cognitive demands, but without directing attentional or memory resources to any aspects of language that can be used to accomplish the task (such as taking away planning time).
There are five ancillary theoretical claims of the Cognition Hypothesis.The first concerns effects of task complexity on language production: 1) monologic tasks which are complex along resource- directing dimensions lead to greater accuracy and complexity of production, but less fluency than simpler tasks along those dimensions. Interactive tasks which are complex along resource-directing dimensions will lead to greater accuracy and less fluency than simpler counterpart versions of tasks. In contrast, along resource-dispersing dimensions of task complexity, complex versions of tasks will lead to lower accuracy, fluency, and complexity of language used relative to simpler versions. Other ancillary theoretical claims are that 2) complex versions of interactive L2 tasks, along any dimensions of task complexity, will lead to more interaction, negotiation of meaning, and language-related episodes (LREs) to resolve misunderstandings, 3) more uptake of corrective feedback provided proactively in the input or reactively during performance, 4) greater long-term retention and memory for input provided on cognitively complex, compared to simpler, versions of tasks, and 5) individual differences between learners in abilities, affective states, and dispositions will increasingly differentiate learning and performance on tasks as they increase in complexity.
TheTriadic Componential Framework provides a taxonomy of task characteristics—that can be manipulated to increase task complexity along resource-directing and resource-dispersing dimen- sions of task demands—as a basis for designing and sequencing increasingly cognitively complex versions of pedagogic tasks for learners.The SSARC model provides a stepwise guide for how to progressively increase the complexity of pedagogic versions of tasks, by first having versions simple on both resource-directing and resource-dispersing dimensions of task demands (SS, sim- ple, stabilize), then second increasing the complexity of the resource-dispersing dimensions (A, automatize access to existing language knowledge), and finally increasing both the complexity of resource-directing and resource-dispersing dimensions (RC, restructure, complexify interlanguage resources). In this way, the full complexity of real-world tasks involving use and comprehension of the L2 can be gradually approximated via a sequence of increasingly cognitively complex peda- gogic task versions.
The Role of Individual Difference Factors in the Theory
The Triadic Componential Framework also distinguishes Task Complexity (the cognitive demands of tasks just referred to) from Task Conditions, which is the interactive participation and participant factors involved in task performance, and Task Difficulty, which refers to learners’ perceptions of task demands which will be affected by individual differences between learners in the cognitive abilities and affective dispositions and traits learners bring to task performance.Task complexity will help explain within-learner variance in the extent to which any one person is able to perform two tasks making greater versus lesser cognitive demands (any one person should always find it harder to accomplish, and be less successful at, tasks high in, for example, causal reasoning demands compared to tasks low in, or with no, causal reasoning demands).Task difficulty will help explain between-learner variance in the extent to which any two people differing, for example, in their causal reasoning abil- ity will be able to be successful on, and meet the cognitive demands of, any one complex version of a second language pedagogic task that requires causal reasoning ability (such as explaining how multiple factors led to changes in a person’s medical condition).So a learner high in causal reasoning ability will find the complex version of a task in the L2 requiring that ability to be less difficult than a learner low in reasoning ability, and so will likely be more successful in performing it.
Task characteristics contributing to their complexity will be differentially related to some abil- ity variables but not others. For example, along a resource-directing dimension of complexity, here-and-now/there-and-then, tasks requiring a series of events that happened sometime in the past, elsewhere (there-and-then) to be described can be expected to draw on working memory abilities much more than tasks requiring a description of events occurring now in a shared setting (here-and-now). Abilities and affective dispositions will therefore interact in specific ways with the specific cognitive demands of tasks to affect the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of language produced, and success in performing the L2 task (Robinson, 2015).
Individual differences between learners in their abilities and affective factors contributing to perceptions of task difficulty will have their greatest effects on L2 learning and performance on cognitively complex versions of tasks. For this reason, it will be important to profile learners’ abili- ties and assess affective dispositions and tendencies, so as to match their “task aptitudes” to more complex versions of tasks having characteristics, described in the triadic componential framework, that draw on the sets of abilities they are high in, thereby helping ensure sequences of those tasks lead to success and optimal opportunities for language use and development. Alternatively, where learners must perform a sequence of tasks having certain characteristics (e.g., + spatial reasoning) that draw on abilities they are low in, then extra practice and compensatory support for performance can be provided.
... The third theory is MSIH (Lardiere 1998a(Lardiere , 1998b(Lardiere , 2000Prevost & White 2000a) with the claim that accounting for morphological variability by appealing to parametric selection or non-selection of features is way too simplistic. Lardier (1998) (2) if the target feature which is supposed to be learned doesn't exist in either L1 or L2, the process of L3 acquisition proceeds like that of L1. ...
... The third theory is MSIH (Lardiere 1998a(Lardiere , 1998b(Lardiere , 2000Prevost & White 2000a) with the claim that accounting for morphological variability by appealing to parametric selection or non-selection of features is way too simplistic. Lardier (1998) (2) if the target feature which is supposed to be learned doesn't exist in either L1 or L2, the process of L3 acquisition proceeds like that of L1. ...
The present study examined the acquisition of the syntactic features of future tense by Persian monolingual speakers and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English in light of the prediction made by several second languages (L2) and third language (L3) generative theories. To this end, 36 Persian monolinguals and 36 Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of English took part in the study. At first, the participants took an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) based on which they were assigned to three groups, namely, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced with regard to their English Language Proficiency. Then, they received a grammatical judgment test and a translation test. The results revealed that the contributors of the study in both groups faced difficulties acquiring syntactic features of future tense since their former languages lacked the same feature. According to the results, the inconvenience learners struggle with is much more noticeable at the early stages of English learning. As the participants got closer to advanced levels, they gradually build the ability to produce more target-like productions. The findings also demonstrated that since both Kurdish and Persian speakers lack specific syntactic features for expressing future tense, they face difficulties acquiring the same feature in English.
... Much research has shown that adult L2 learners display optionality and instability in their L2 morphology when marking finiteness, tense or mood (i.e., Montrul 2004;Prévost & White 2000). Jiang (2000) proposes that the functional features of lexical items (including verbs) are acquired in stages and that morphological features are the most challenging, leading to the variability seen during L2 lexical development. ...
In monolingual (L1) acquisition, children produce target-like subject-verb agreement early in development in both Spanish (Grinstead 1998) and English (Guasti 2002). However, in heritage simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) and child second language acquirers (L2), agreement morphology shows variability (Goldin 2020; Herschensohn & Stevenson 2005) due to age of acquisition (AoA) effects. Lexical frequency is another factor that has been shown to play a role in modulating L1 (i.e. Ambridge et al. 2015) and heritage acquisition (i.e. Giancaspro 2017, 2020), but little is known about its effect in child L2. This study explores the extent to which verb lexical frequency plays a role in the acquisition of verb morphology for bilingual children with differing AoA, comparing 42 2L1 heritage children with 46 L2 Spanish learners with AoA of 5;0. They participated in a Spanish fill-in-the-blanks production task. The results of an analysis focused on singular correr and comer (chosen because they differ in only one phoneme) indicated that responses to comer, the more frequent verb, were more target-like for both groups, and that frequency showed a stronger effect for heritage 2L1 children than for L2 children, while also modulating non-target-like responses. We discuss these findings with implications for bilingual development and education.
This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics, including the acquisition of grammatical features, challenges of functional morphology, the impact of the native language on subsequently acquired languages, and interfaces between linguistic domains. Other chapters address how non-native language processing differs from native processing, while the volume also highlights internal and external factors affecting bi- and multilingual development and points to important avenues for further generative research on second language acquisition.
Emphasizing the necessity for theory-driven language acquisition research, the studies in this collection aim to formalize the kinds of information available to first and second language learners, as well as to shed light on how that information is used to solve a variety of learning problems. The volume pays homage to the scholarly contributions of Susanne E. Carroll, delving into the impact she has had on the field of language acquisition. The central themes of input, evidence, and exposure – found throughout Carroll’s work – are explored in this volume. The contributions cover a range of topics such as the emergence of linguistic theorizing in language acquisition research, the acquisition of grammatical gender, classroom language learning, learning on first exposure, asymmetries between developmental trajectories in first and second language acquisition, and the effects of grammatical complexity on language development.
El español es una lengua con características únicas, como el uso del morfema de género gramatical y el artículo como determinante, lo que dificulta su aprendizaje para hablantes de lenguas como el persa, donde su lengua materna carece de estos elementos. La dificultad se profundiza aún más cuando se trata de la concordancia de género y número en los grupos nominales en español. En este estudio, se busca analizar un corpus de estudiantes persas de español utilizando la metodología de Análisis de Errores, con el propósito de identificar los errores frecuentes en cuanto al género gramatical en español, analizar las causas subyacentes y sugerir posibles soluciones para mejorar la comprensión y el uso del género gramatical en español entre los estudiantes persas. Palabras clave: el género en español, concordancia de género, análisis de errores, lengua persa, español ELE.---------- Spanish is a language with unique characteristics, such as the use of the grammatical gender morpheme and the article as a determiner, which makes it difficult for speakers of languages such as Persian, whose native language lacks these elements, to learn. The difficulty is further compounded when it comes to the agreement of gender and number in nominal groups in Spanish. In this study, we seek to analyze a corpus of Persian students of Spanish using the Error Analysis methodology with the purpose of identifying frequent errors regarding grammatical gender in Spanish, analyzing the underlying causes, and suggesting possible solutions to improve understanding, and the use of grammatical gender in Spanish among Persian students.
The volume espouses an ecosystemic standpoint on multilingual acquisition and learning, viewing language development and use as both ontogenesis and phylogenesis. Multilingualism is inclusively used to refer to sociolinguistic diversity and pluralism. Whether speech, writing, gesture, or body movement, language is a conduit that carries meaning within a complex, fluid, and context-dependent framework that engages different aspects of the individual, the communicative interaction, communicative acts, and social parameters. Continually modified over the years to better represent its multidisciplinary scope, the sociobiological notion of language has found steady and productive ground within major theoretical frameworks, which, individually or holistically, contribute to a rounded understanding of language acquisition, learning, and use by exploring both system-internal and system-external factors and their interaction. Summoning the work of leading academics, the volume outlines the changing dynamics of multilingualism in children and adults internationally with the latest advances and under-represented coverage that highlight the ecosystemic nature of multilingual acquisition, learning, and use.
This paper tests the hypothesis that N-N combinations (N-N word compounds and phrasal compounds) share a common underlying structural symmetry that needs to be dissolved through movement of one of the nouns. Certain types of N-N combinations are in complementary distribution in Spanish and English: N-N compounds are more productive in English, N-preposition-N compounds more productive in Spanish, and certain N-N compounds with the meaning of coordination of the nouns are possible in both languages. Bilingual heritage speakers of Spanish with English as the majority language have access to the English-type N-N compound, the Spanish-type NPN phrasal compound and the coordinated N-N type in both languages. Assuming that all three types start out as symmetric mergers of two nouns, we test whether bilinguals will prefer one of the symmetry-breaking strategies by using an acceptability judgement task. First, we found a certain degree of cross-linguistic influence in the higher acceptance of N-N compounds in Spanish vs. English. Second, participants preferred structures that have P (de), which we interpreted as the most salient strategy to break the N-N symmetry. We conclude that symmetry-breaking is a highly ranked preference for bilinguals as a result of having two active grammars.
Formal approaches to bi- and multilingual grammars rely on two important claims: (i) the grammatical architecture should be able to deal with mono- and bi-/multilingual data without any specific constraints for the latter, (ii) features play a pivotal role in accounting for patterns across and within grammars. In the present paper, it is argued that an exoskeletal approach to grammar, which clearly distinguishes between the underlying syntactic features and their morphophonological realizations (exponents), offers an ideal tool to analyze data from bi- and multilingual speakers. Specifically, it is shown that this framework can subsume the specific mechanism of Feature Reassembly developed by Donna Lardiere since the late 1990’s. Three case studies involving different languages and language combinations are offered in support of this claim, demonstrating how an exoskeletal approach can be employed without any additional constraints or mechanisms.
This study investigates whether forms associated with verbal inflection can be acquired in relation to two UG-based L2 acquisition hypotheses: the Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) Hypothesis (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition Studies in generative grammar , 317–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the ‘full transfer/full access’ model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli, Ianthi-maria & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The Interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23. 215–242). The former captures the insight that convergence on grammars like those of native speakers is possible, whereas the latter argues that a native/non-native divergence results from the inaccessibility of some uninterpretable syntactic features. Ninety adult L1 speakers of Chinese of different English proficiency levels were asked to interpret and produce tense and agreement in various contexts in three tasks. Results suggest that the underlying grammatical representations in the end-state grammar may not be the same as native speakers’. We speculate that the inaccessibility of the uninterpretable [uInfl:] feature of v and the uninterpretable [uInfl:*] feature of be are the potential source of difficulty in acquiring verbal inflection in L2 English.
This study addresses the acquisition of second language (L2) Spanish grammatical gender by native speakers of two typologically different languages: English ( n = 39) and Russian ( n = 37). We aim to explore if the presence or absence of gender features in the first language (L1) influences the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender. Participants completed an acceptability judgment task consisting of 40 sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish Determiner Phrases (DPs). They included masculine and feminine Ns (Nouns) with transparent or opaque endings. Our findings show that (1) both groups are sensitive to gender non-matching structures, although L1 Russian speakers gave the lowest scores to ungrammatical structures in Spanish; (2) higher rating scores to masculine matching DPs point to the use of masculine as default by both L2 groups; (3) Ns with transparent endings act as cues for L2 Spanish learners, since both groups of participants rated the non-matching DPs with transparent Ns more accurately than those with opaque Ns. Therefore, our findings suggest that gender in L2 Spanish can be acquired regardless of the presence or the absence of these grammatical property in the L1, although its presence in the L1 seems to accelerate this process.
This cross-sectional study investigated the development of second language (L2) syntactic processing and the role of inhibitory control in Chinese-English bilingual children. Participants included students from the 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, and undergraduates (i.e., the control group). They were asked to perform a syntactic grammaticality judgment task and an inhibitory control task. Experimental materials were designed based on the syntactic violation of the third person singular rule which differs largely between Chinese and English. The results showed that Chinese-English bilingual children’s L2 syntactic processing ability improves as their L2 learning experience increases. Besides, automatic syntactic processing was observed at the 7th grade. Moreover, significant effect of inhibitory control on L2 syntactic processing was found in the 5th-grade children and the college students. The results of this study revealed the development of bilingual children’s L2 syntactic ability and the effect of inhibitory control ability, supporting and developing the Unified Competition Model to a certain extent.
En este artículo examinamos la incorporación de la lingüística en las prácticas de la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera, segunda lengua (L2) o lengua adicional. Dicha disciplina constituye una inagotable fuente de recursos para los profesores de L2, quienes pueden sacar provecho del estudio de la lingüística. Después de dar un repaso de tres prominentes escuelas lingüísticas, mostramos que, aunque los partidarios de las diferentes corrientes teóricas han abarcado la investigación sobre el lenguaje desde diversos puntos de vista, cada enfoque le ofrece al profesor valiosas perspectivas que le permitirán desarrollar herramientas didácticas eficaces para mejorar la enseñanza de la lengua. Ofrecemos unos ejemplos prácticos y luego examinamos tres facetas de la adquisición de L2 que se benefician de prácticas informadas por la lingüística aplicada. Opinamos que los profesores de español que no han cursado clases de lingüística pueden beneficiarse de una orientación a la disciplina de la lingüística. 1. Presentación del tema Somos lingüistas 1 que deseamos dar a conocer los beneficios de la lingüística para la enseñanza del español. A pesar de las muchas publicaciones sobre el tema en décadas previas (p. ej., Sanz & Igoa, 2012), destacando maneras de mejorar la instrucción de lenguas, encontramos que muchos profesores de español como segunda lengua (L2) podrían aprovechar más los conceptos lingüísticos disponibles. 2 Creemos firmemente que la lingüística-o el estudio científico del lenguaje-podría servirle a cada profesor de español para ampliar su conocimiento de la naturaleza del lenguaje. Esto a su turno tiene beneficios importantes tanto para los maestros como para los aprendices de lengua, lingüística, literatura y teoría cultural. Puede ser que cursar la lingüística no sea una parte esencial de muchos programas de estudio o de preparación de docentes. Por ejemplo, investigamos las páginas web de los 36 programas estadounidenses de estudios de posgrado con doctorado en literatura hispánica que aparecen en el sitio de Internet Spanish Academic (Spanish Academic Network, n.d.). Nuestra investigación, llevada a cabo en 2021, revela que solo ocho de esos programas requieren que el alumno complete una asignatura de lingüística. En cambio, 31 de esos programas indican en sus materiales públicos disponibles por Internet que requieren que el alumno curse una asignatura de metodología pedagógica, pero solamente es un requisito entre los alumnos que enseñan clases de español Todos los coautores contribuyeron de igual manera a este manuscrito. En este artículo nos enfocamos en la enseñanza del español, pero el lector interesado en consultar técnicas para la enseñanza de la lingüística puede ver Knouse et al. (2015).
In our increasingly multilingual modern world, understanding how languages beyond the first are acquired and processed at a brain level is essential to design evidence-based teaching, clinical interventions and language policy. Written by a team of world-leading experts in a wide range of disciplines within cognitive science, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the study of third (and more) language acquisition and processing. It features 30 approachable chapters covering topics such as multilingual language acquisition, education, language maintenance and language loss, multilingual code-switching, ageing in the multilingual brain, and many more. Each chapter provides an accessible overview of the state of the art in its topic, while offering comprehensive access to the specialized literature, through carefully curated citations. It also serves as a methodological resource for researchers in the field, offering chapters on methods such as case studies, corpora, artificial language systems or statistical modelling of multilingual data.
We investigated the predictive processing of grammatical number information through stem-vowel alternations in German strong verbs by adult first language (L1) speakers and Dutch-speaking advanced second language (L2) learners of German, and the influence of working memory and awareness (i.e., whether participants consciously registered the predictive cue) thereon. While changed stem vowels indicate a singular referent (e.g., /ε/ in fällt 3SG , "falls"), unchanged vowels indicate plural (e.g., /a/ in fallt 2PL , "fall"). This target structure presents a challenge for L2 learners of German due to its subregularity and low salience. With their eye movements being tracked, participants matched German auditory sentences (VSO order) with one of two pictures, displaying identical action scenes but varying in agent number. The number cue provided by the strong verbs allowed participants to predict whether the upcoming subject would be singular or plural. The analyses revealed significant prediction, measured as predictive eye movements toward the target picture and faster button-press responses. Prediction in the L2 group was weaker than in the L1 group and present in the eye movement data only. Higher working memory scores were linked to faster predictive presses. Approximately half of the participants had become aware of the predictive cue, and being aware facilitated prediction to a limited extent.
We analyzed the production, acceptability and online comprehension of Spanish differential object marking (DOM) by two groups of bilingual speakers living in the U.S.: heritage speakers and L2 learners. DOM is the overt marking of direct objects that are higher on the animacy and referentiality scales, such as animate and specific objects in Spanish, marked by the preposition a (Juan ve a María ‘Juan sees DOM María’). Previous studies have reported variability and high omission rates of obligatory DOM in bilingual situations where Spanish is in contact with a non-DOM language.Our study combined different methodologies to tap knowledge of DOM in the two groups. The results showed that heritage speakers and L2 learners (1) exhibited variability with DOM in production (in two oral tasks), comprehension (in an acceptability judgement task), and processing (in an eye-tracking reading task); (2) can integrate DOM into their production, judgments and processing, but they do so inconsistently, and (3) type of task and type of sentence each have an effect on speakers’ use of DOM.
Arabic linguistics encompasses a range of language forms and functions from formal to informal, classical to contemporary, written to spoken, all of which have vastly different research traditions. Recently however, the increasing prominence of new methodologies such as corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics have allowed Arabic linguistics to be studied from multiple perspectives, revealing key discoveries about the nature of Arabic-in-use and deeper knowledge of traditional fields of study. With contributions from internationally renowned experts on the language, this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview of both traditional and modern topics in Arabic linguistics. Chapters are divided into six thematic areas: applied Arabic linguistics, variation and sociolinguistics, theoretical studies, computational and corpus linguistics, new media studies and Arabic linguistics in literature and translation. It is an essential resource for students and researchers wishing to explore the exciting and rapidly moving field of Arabic linguistics.
In language learning, the understanding towards the language usage which is appropriate with the grammatical rules is an important thing, because most of the students’ tasks are dealing with writing, especially writing a scientific paper. In the writing process, Deaf students sometimes struggles with the writing issues. One of their writing issues is the difficulties in understanding the concept of a language which is suitable with the grammar rules, word order, etc. The type of this research is Literature review research, and the method or structure used in this research is Narrative literature review with chronological order. This research mostly discussing the difficulties and challenges faced by Deaf student and the teacher in the teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The data gained in this research is using the review from 10 journal articles. Thus, the goal of this research is to identify the challenge of Deaf students in learning English, especially at the university level.
This study examines the acquisition of functional morphology which overtly marks lexical aspect in Russian by adult second language (L2) learners of Turkish. Russian and Turkish are different in the ways they mark both grammatical and lexical aspects. In Russian, both grammatical and lexical (telic) aspects are marked by overt verbal morphology. In Turkish, however, while the grammatical aspect of verbs is marked by inflectional morphemes, which also express tense and/or mood (Kornfilt, 1997), lexical aspect (telicity) is marked by quantized nominal arguments combined with dynamic verbs. We tested 16 L1 Turkish/L2 Russian learners and 16 L1 Russian speakers on a Semantic Entailment (SE) task with telicity and boundedness semantic features and a Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) task involving sentences with perfective and imperfective forms including quantity and non-quantity internal argument themes. The results of the SE task indicated that L2 Russian speakers were not as successful as L1 Russian speakers in choosing the most logical entailment to perfective sentences rather than imperceptive sentences. The differences between the two groups were statistically significant. The results of the TVJ task also indicated that L2 Russian speakers were less successful than L1 Russian speakers in matching perfective and imperfective sentences with correct pictures. These findings support the claim that adult L2 speakers have difficulty with the acquisition of functional morphology, in particular aspectual morphology and its telicity feature.
A heritage language is the term given to a language spoken at home by bilingual children of immigrant parents. Written by a leading figure in the field, this pioneering, in-depth study brings together three heritage languages – Hindu, Spanish and Romanian - spoken in the United States. It demonstrates how heritage speakers drive morphosyntactic change when certain environmental characteristics are met, and considers the relationship between social and cognitive factors and timing in language acquisition, bilingualism, and language change. It also discusses the implications of the findings for the language education of heritage speakers in the USA and considers how the heritage language can be maintained in the English-speaking school system. Advancing our understanding of heritage language development and change, this book is essential reading for students and researchers of linguistics and multilingualism, immigration, education studies and language policy, as well as educators and policy makers.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) have become widespread in second language acquisition (SLA) research and a growing body of literature has been produced in recent years. We surveyed 61 SLA papers that use ERPs to study L2 sentence processing in healthy late learners. Our main aim was to provide a critical summary of findings from the decade 2010-2020. The qualitative review reveals that proficiency plays a major role in determining ERP components, but its effect is modulated by language similarity and individual differences. The statistical analysis (a multinomial logistic regression) suggests that ERP components are uniquely predicted by learners’ proficiency level and the linguistic phenomenon at issue, while no effect of language distance is found. We also made a cursive methodological overview, which evidences several gaps in the literature and raises some concerns on the way proficiency is factorized across studies.
This experimental study examines the acquisition of null and overt pronoun interpretations in Chinese as a second language by native speakers of English. A linguistic phenomenon not present in the native language of the learners is identified: the null element in the embedded subject position of Mandarin resultative constructions can only refer to the main-clause subject, while an overt pronoun in the same position can refer both to the main-clause subject and to another entity in the discourse. Thus the acquisition task includes learning a new functional morpheme, a null element, as well as constraining its interpretation in the resultative construction. We tested 59 L2 learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels and 51 native Mandarin speakers on a truth value judgment task. The learners showed a pattern of interpretation that was statistically indistinguishable from the native speakers’ in all but one context. We argue that our findings point to largely successful acquisition of the requisite proform interpretations, even though the restrictions on the interpretation of null elements cannot be transferred from the native language.
This study investigates the written production of direct object (DO) anaphora in L2 Spanish by adult English native speakers. It focuses on the use of clitics and full DPs in topic continuity, where highly salient topics are typically recovered by clitics in native Spanish. A combination of pragmatic factors in subject anaphora resolution (referential ambiguity and distance) and morphosyntactic factors in the acquisition of clitics (gender and animacy) was analyzed in 5 subcorpora from the CEDEL2 ( Corpus Escrito del Español L2) . Following Learner Corpus Research methodology, 773 anaphoric DOs and their antecedents were tagged across 150 texts (from low-intermediate to upper-advanced proficiency). Results showed that as learner proficiency increases, the predominant anaphoric strategy shifts from redundant DP overuse to felicitous pronominalization. Clitic avoidance is the general strategy intimately related to clitics’ morphosyntactic deficits at advanced levels, but also to pragmatic principles supporting the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis ( Lozano, 2016 ).
We argue that young German children have the major functional sentential heads, in particular the inflectional and complementizer systems. The major empirical basis is natural production data from a 25-month-old child. We perform quantitative analyses which show that the full complement of functional categories is available to the child, and that what crucially distinguishes the child's grammar from the adult's is the use of infinitives in matrix clauses. The evidence we consider includes the child's knowledge of finiteness and verb placement, agreement, head movement, and permissible word-order variations. We examine several accounts which presuppose a degenerate grammar or which deviate from the standard analysis of German and conclude that they provide a less adequate explanation of the acquisition facts.
To what extent, if any, does Universal Grammar (UG) constrain second language (L2) acquisition? This is not only an empirical question, but one which is currently investigable. In this context, L2 acquisition is emerging as an important new domain of psycholinguistic research. Three logical possibilities have been articulated regarding the role of UG in L2 acquisition: The first is the “no access” hypothesis that claims that no aspect of UG is available to the L2 learner. The second is the “partial access” hypothesis that claims that only LI instantiated principles and LI instantiated parameter-values of UG are available to the learner. The third, called the “full access” hypothesis, asserts that UG in its entirety constrains L2 acquisition.
In this paper we argue that there is no compelling evidence to support either of the first two hypotheses. Moreover, we provide evidence concerning functional categories in L2 acquisition consistent with the claim that UG is fully available to the L2 learner (see also Flynn 1987; Li 1993; Martohardjono 1992; Schwartz & Sprouse 1991; Thomas 1991; White 1989). In addition, we will attempt to clarify some of currently unclear theoretical issues that arise with respect to positing UG as an explanatory theory of L2 acquisition. We will also investigate in some detail certain crucial methodological questions involved in experimentally testing the role of UG in L2 acquisition and finally, we will present a set of experimental results of our own supporting the “Full Access” hypothesis.
The acquisition sequences of 11 English functors were compared for native Chinese- and Spanish-speaking children learning English. Three different methods of speech analysis used to obtain the sequences are described in detail. All three methods yielded approximately the same sequence of acquisition for both language groups. This finding provides strong support for the existence of universal child language learning strategies and suggests a program of research that could lead to their description.
The grammatical status of Romance pronominal clitics has long been the object of intense debate. Are they syntactically-independent arguments or are they affixal agreement markers? This dissertation addresses this question with respect to Québec Colloquial French (QCF). It treats the morphophonological and morphosyntactic dimensions as two independent dimensions, thus allowing either for affixes to have argument status and prohibiting them from co-occurring with an overt, lexical argument, or for non-affixal elements to behave like agreement markers and not count as syntactic arguments. The analysis reveals that all the clitics of QCF are affixes at the morphological level, since they demonstrate numerous patterns which are too idiosyncratic to be handled by syntactic rules. Only subject clitics, however, function as agreement markers, since they occur in all the environments where we would expect agreement markers; object markers, conversely, are excluded from those environments.
I shall present a morphological analysis following the approach taken by Roberge and his colleagues and work within the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1993). I assume that fully-inflected lexical items are inserted in the syntax, and I adopt Cummins & Roberge’s (1994a,b) suggestion that an additional interface, the Lexicon-Syntax Interface, handles all inflectional morphology.
Chapter 1 introduces the main problem and summarizes a number of recent studies on Romance and French clitics. Chapter 2 presents the facts in QCF and applies morphophonological and morphosyntactic criteria in order to determine the grammatical status of these argument markers. Chapter 3 develops a morphological approach that allows fully inflected verbs to be inserted in the syntax. Finally, chapter 4 discusses one element which has traditionally been excluded from the paradigm of subject markers: ça. The chapter is divided into two parts; the first one discusses the semantic aspects concerning the generic use of ça, while the second one develops an approach to grammatical agreement which allows agreement targets to introduce their own features, as well as certain types of feature conflicts.
This paper is concerned with the acquisition of the morphosyntax of finite verbs by monolingual children acquiring British English as their first language. The primary data are drawn from a large naturalistic sample of more than 100,000 early child utterances (based on the corpus of 39 cross-sectional and 94 longitudinal studies described in Radford, 1990a:11-13). The theoretical framework used will be that of Government and Binding Theory (=GB), in the version outlined in Chomsky (1986), with modifications introduced by Abney (1987) and Pollock (1989). In order to clarify some of the descriptive assumptions made here, I shall beg in by providing a brief outline of the morphosyntax of finite verbs in adult English.
In this paper I will argue that child first language (L1) acquisition and adult second language (L2) acquisition are guided by distinct sets of principles. In particular, I argue that adult L2 acquisition follows from general learning strategies, while child L1 acquisition primarily follows from principles of Univesal Grammar (UG). This claim was originally made by Clahsen and Muysken (1986), in order to account for observed differences between children and adults with regard to the acquisition of German word order. The present study provides additional support for our original hypothesis by comparing the emergence of agreement markings in adult L2 learners of German and child L1 learners of German.
This article addresses current proposals in the literature suggesting that thematic verb-raising is optional in the grammars of L2 acquirers, due either to failure to acquire verbal agreement morphology or to an impairment of the mechanism relating the ‘richness’ of morphological agreement paradigms to syntactic feature strength. I examine naturalistic longitudinal production data from Patty, a native Chinese speaker whose L2 English grammar has ‘fossilized’ with regard to verbal agreement morphology. The data show that, despite the omission of regular agreement suffixation in about 96% of obligatory contexts, thematic verbs are never raised in Patty's English,thus showing no optionality of raising.The results indicate that even in cases where regular verbal morphology is neveracquired,it is still possible for the learner to determine feature strength and the status of verb-raising in the target language.
The acquisition of negation is perhaps the best-studied syntactic phenomenon in early interlanguage research,and many of these publications concluded that first (L1) and second language (L2) development had much more in common than had previously been assumed. In the present paper, the problem of whether the same underlying principles and mechanisms guide L1 and L2 acquisition will be re-examined from the perspective of more recent grammatical theory. The empirical basis consists of longitudinal case-studies of the acquisition of French and German as first and second languages. The L2 learners' first language is Spanish.
In L1 data one finds a rapid, uniform and almost error-free course of development across languages exhibiting quite different morphosyntactic means of expressing negation. This is explained in terms of Parameter Theory, primarily referring to functional categories determining the placement of finite verbal elements. L2 acquisition, on the other hand, is characterized by considerable variability, not only crosslinguistically, but also across learners and even within individuals. This can be accounted for by assuming different strategies of language use. More importantly, different kinds of linguistic knowledge are drawn upon in L1 as opposed to L2. It is claimed that adult L2 learners, rather than using structure-dependent operations constrained by Universal Grammar (UG), rely primarily on linear sequencing strategies which apply to surface strings.
This study focuses on the development of complex word formation in L2 acquisition. We examine experimentally elicited data on English deverbal synthetic compounding (such as toe-painter) by native Spanish speakers and conclude that: (a) development proceeds in stages which clearly reflect UG-constrained L1 influence; (b) nontargetlike productions (e.g. painter-toes) show attempts to spell out the grammatical features associated with functional categories in deverbal compounding; though nontargetlike, they are nonetheless consistent with the compound's required feature-marking; (c) such attempts implicate the early existence in the Interlanguage of those functional heads and their projections in the (lexical) syntax; i.e., the absence of the correct phonological form cannot be taken to imply lack of knowledge of morphosyntactic features and their corresponding phrase structure.
In this article, I discuss the syntactic properties of child Dutch root infinitives (RIs) in light of recent findings concerning the structure of adult Dutch. The data examined offer support for those analyses that treat RIs in terms of truncated structures and speak against proposals that interpret RIs as root CPs. In the discussion I focus on one analysis representative of the truncation approach, namely, that developed by Rizzi (1993; 1993/1994), and on one analysis representative of the CP approach, that developed by Boser, Lust, Santelmann, and Whitman (1992), which is specifically adapted to the Germanic verb-second (V2) languages. This research is based on a corpus of production data for the child, Hein, from ages 2;4 to 3;1, obtained from CHILDES (MacWhinney and Snow (1985), coders: Wijnen and Boers).
This article reviews recent SLA studies which have methodologically assumed a direct relation between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and the development of functional phrase structure in the syntax. Results from naturalistic production data collected over eight years apart are reported, establishing the ‘fossilization’ of English L2 tense morphology for an adult native Chinese speaker at a consistently very low rate of suppliance (approximately 34%) in obligatory contexts. Nevertheless, in addition to robust evidence for CP in the grammar, the data also show perfect distribution of pronominal case (100%) in all contexts, suggesting the presence of a TP bearing a fully specified [± finite] feature. Viewed in light of the steady state (in other words, where grammatical development has ‘ended up’), these results indicate that the courses of syntactic and morphological development are independent and that the mapping between them is much less direct than previously supposed. I conclude that it is this mapping itself, in the morphology or PF component, which may be imperfectly acquired, and from which a lack of functional categories or extended phrase structure development may not be inferred.
Around the age of 2, language learners typically produce main declaratives with verbs in the infinitival form. It is claimed that such root infinitives are truncated structures, arising from the option of "stripping off" external clausal layers. The basic properties of the construction are shown to be amenable to the Truncation Hypothesis: Root infinitives are incompatible with wh-elements, subject critics, auxiliaries, and so forth. The virtual nonoccurrence of the construction in early Italian follows from the Truncation Hypothesis in conjunction with independent properties of Italian infinitives with respect to V-to-I movement. The Truncation Hypothesis also relates root infinitives to other properties of early grammatical systems, such as the option of omitting subjects in root contexts.
White (e.g., 1990/1991) and Schwartz (e.g., 1993) suggested that parametric values that determine verb raising transfer into initial second-language (L2) representations. However, reaction-time research by Eubank and Grace (1996) suggested that this type of transfer does not appear; rather, the value determining raising is radically underspecified, allowing raising to occur optionally. These findings are problematic, however, because reaction times require so much extrapolation. In this article, we employ a truth-value task to reexamine native-language (NL) transfer among Chinese-speaking L2 learners of English—that is, where neither NL nor mature L2 permits verb raising. Findings confirm largely the Eubank and Grace findings, indicating optionality effects. Discussion includes a comparison with the earlier findings of Eubank and Grace and analysis of developmental and transfer-based explanations for the observed optionality effects. In the end, only an explanation involving an impairment to verbal features under I° appears to be supported.
White (e.g., 1990/1991; 1992a) argued that grammatical representations in second-language development can be understood in terms of parametric values that are transferred from the learner's native language. Schwartz (1993a; 1993b) and Schwartz and Sprouse (1994) push this view of transfer to its logical limit: The initial state of L2 acquisition is determined in its entirety by the parametric values of the native language. This article presents early-stage learner data that are not compatible with this strong view of parametric transfer. An alternative proposal is made, a weak transfer view in which lexical and functional projections transfer, and the headedness of those projections transfers, but morphology-driven values of features like the strength of agreement do not transfer. This idea is checked against learner data and is also evaluated for the extent to which it follows in a principled fashion from linguistic theory.
Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994; in press) argued that adult language learners initially project verb phrases and that subsequent projection of functional categories is input driven, with inflectional phrases emerging before complementizer phrases. They assumed that the same is true for first-language acquisition (Clahsen, Eisenbeiss, and Vainikka (1994)). On this account, one would expect child second language (L2) learners to lack functional categories in the early stages of language learning. In this article, we argue against this position using data drawn from a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous production data from two English-speaking children who started attending French kindergarten at age 5. Our data suggest that functional categories and their projections are present in the earliest utterances available. Relevant data include the productive use of determiners, inflection, case marking, subject clitics, wh-questions, and correct negative placement. Changes were largely quantitative rather than qualitative in both children, with no radical shifts in the grammar as regards functional projections. These data do not support the claim for a purely lexical stage in child L2 acquisition.
This paper presents results of a
response-latency (RL) experiment with English-speaking learners of German that investigated to
what extent—if any—two different groups of second language (L2) learners permit
raising of the thematic verb. The framework under which the study was conducted involves
varying theoretical predictions derived from the native-language (NL) transfer view of Schwartz
and Sprouse (1994, 1996), the gradual-development view of Vainikka and Young-Scholten
(1994, 1996), the underspecification view of Eubank (1993/1994), and a local-impairment
view that presents a more parsimonious solution to the L2 developmental problem than standard
“no access” views. The L2 results reported here show that learners respond in
different ways to stimulus sentences with raised and unraised verbs depending on the
subjects' level of development. Surprisingly, it is the less advanced learners who exhibit
an RL preference for apparently raised-verb experimental stimuli; the more advanced learners do
not differentiate between raised-verb and unraised-verb stimuli. Analysis of these findings
reveals that the less advanced group may only project VPs, consistent with the
gradual-development view of Vainikka and Young-Scholten. Crucially, however, the Local
Impairment Hypothesis is the only view that is consistent with the results from the more
advanced learners, especially when they are seen in developmental context.
In this thesis, I argue that early child second language (L2) grammars allow truncation, on a par with proposals by Rizzi (1993/1994) and Haegeman (1995) for first language (L1) acquisition. This account (the Truncation Hypothesis) holds that Rizzi's (1994) Root Principle, according to which root declaratives are CPs, is initially underspecified in L2 systems (for processing reasons). This means that the root of main declaratives will not systematically be CP. Instead, different types of roots should be projected, such as CP, IP or VP, with VP underlying root infinitives. If one further assumes that functional categories are present in early grammars, the possibility of truncation can thus account for optionality of verb-movement and finiteness in early SLA, and more generally for why such categories seem to be optionally projected initially (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994; 1996; Eubank, 1992; 1993/1994; 1996). Predictions based on the Truncation Hypothesis were tested against longitudinal spontaneous production data from child and adult L2 learners. There were two child and two adult learners of L2 French (whose L1s were English and Arabic) and two child two adult learners of L2 German (native speakers of Romance pro-drop languages). The findings suggest that the distribution of finite and nonfinite verbs is structurally determined in L2 child grammar, i.e. tenseless verbs only appear when VP is the root, while finite verbs are found when functional categories are projected. This in turn means that children project truncated structures in early L2 acquisition. I argue that no other theory of the nature of early L2 grammars is able to account for the full range of properties of the child L2 data. The adult data are less conclusive concerning the possibility of truncation in adult L2 grammars. In particular, the learners seem to use infinitival markers as substitutes for finite inflections, which means that nonfinite verbs are found in contexts which are not predicted by the Truncation Hypothesis. The difference between the child and adult learners is attributed to problems that adults may have in mapping the syntactic and morphological systems (Lardiere, 1996), and not to a discrepancy in syntactic knowledge.
Viruses, parasites and optionality in L2 performance. Paper presented at Second Language Research Forum
- M-L Beck
A minimal theory of inflection. Unpublished manuscript
- J Lumsden
- G Halefom