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CCAAMMLLIINNGG 22000077 Proceedings of the Fifth University of Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research held on 20-21 March 2007 Edited by Naomi Hilton Rachel Arscott Katherine Barden Arti Krishna Sheena Shah Meg Zellers Cambridge Institute of Language Research Cambridge, UK © CamLing 2007: Proceedings of the Fifth University of Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research Published by the Cambridge Institute of Language Research (CILR) CamLing Proceedings Editorial Committee c/o Department of Linguistics University of Cambridge Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA United Kingdom http://www.cilr.cam.ac.uk http://www.srcf.ucam.org/camling Copyright of each individual paper remains with the paper’s author(s). Neither the publisher nor the editors are responsible for the contents of the papers in this volume. Any comments, questions, or requests for reproduction of material appearing in this publication should therefore be addressed to the individual authors. TABLE OF CONTENTS Age effects on the acquisition of Uninterpretable Features by proficient Saudi Arabic speakers of English......................................................................1 KHOLOUD AL-THUBAITI Pragmatic Inference in the interpretation of Sluiced Prepositional Phrases...............................9 HENRY BEECHER Controlled Language through the definitions of coastal terms in English.........................................................................................................17 MIRIAM BUENDÍA CASTROS AND ELSA HUERTAS BARROS The role of writing strategy use in relation to Chinese EFL students’ achievement in English writing: A cognitive approach.........................................................25 SHIH-CHIEH CHIEN Two subtypes of M-implicatures: A study with special reference to Modern Greek..................................................................32 MICHAEL CHIOU How and when do children acquire the use of discourse markers?..........................................40 INJI CHOI Acquisition of the Chinese reflexive ‘ziji’ by English and Russian speakers...........................................................................................48 ESUNA DUGAROVA The early acquisition of determiners in Yucatec Mayan and Spanish......................................56 MARY ESPINOSA OCHOA Moral Incoherence in documentary linguistics: theorizing the interventionist aspect of the field...................................................................64 ANICKA FAST Language acquisition in autistic children: A longitudinal study..............................................72 NADEGE FOUDON, ANNE REBOUL, SABINE MANIFICAT OBJECT topicalization in Cantonese.......................................................................................80 CAUVIS SUET MAN FUNG The social meaning of stress assignment in Hønefoss Norwegian...........................................88 NANNA HAUG HILTON The role of prosody in Japanese: The use of pitch information in spoken word recognition by L1 and L2 speakers...............96 MARIKO HONDA Reference to space in Chinese and English poster descriptions.............................................104 YINGLIN JI The speaking subject in communication: Subjectivity and the (Gendered) Self...................................................................................112 CHARIKLEIA KAPELLIDI Politeness, gender and the face of the speaker.......................................................................120 ELENI KARAFOTI On an isomorphism of finite binary rooted trees with setgraphs............................................127 ADAM KAY The perspective of external remerge on Right Node Raising.................................................130 MARLIES KLUCK ‘English meets German’: On the creative exploitation of Anglicisms and code-mixing in press language in the context of the Fifa World Cup 2006.............................................138 SEBASTIAN KNOSPE The syntax-semantics interface in TL-LFG............................................................................146 MILTIADIS KOKKONIDIS Place of articulation and consonantal strength.......................................................................154 JOSÉ MARÍA LAHOZ BENGOECHEA Variation in Singapore English as reflected in aspectual constructions.................................162 JAKOB LEIMGRUBER A study of self- and peer-assessment on learners' oral proficiency........................................169 HANA LIM The experiencer constraint revisted........................................................................................177 AYA MELTZER Language standardization and the print culture in 16th century Italy.....................................185 NIKOLA MILIC A systems model of language planning..................................................................................192 LINDSAY MILLIGAN A quantitative analysis of rhoticity in Dorset: Evidence from four locations of an urban to rural hierarchy of change..............................199 CAROLINE PIERCY The markedness of the negative: Analysing negation in a spoken corpus...............................................................................207 ALYSON PITTS Are L2 English article choices UG-regulated?.......................................................................213 NATTAMA PONGPAIROJ Mapping metaphors in modern Greek....................................................................................221 CRISTINA PSOMADAKIS Text-setting constraints revisted: English and Spanish art song............................................229 ROSALÍA RODRÍGUEZ VÁZQUEZ The typology of number borrowing in Berber........................................................................237 LAMEEN SOUAG Variability in F0 valleys: The case of Belfast English...........................................................245 JENNIFER SULLIVAN Agrammatism and the Lexicon-Syntax interface Dutch Agrammatics’ performance on Saturated Experiencer Verbs..................................253 ISMAEL TEOMIRO-GARCÍA Logic in pragmatics................................................................................................................261 HIROYUKI UCHIDA Age Effects on the Acquisition of Uninterpretable Features by Proficient Saudi Arabic Speakers of English* Kholoud Al-Thubaiti University of Essex A recent account of fossilization in adult second language (L2) grammars is the ‘Interpretability Hypothesis’ (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). It proposes that properties associated with uninterpretable features not already activated in the first language (L1) grammar will pose a learnability problem for older L2 speakers because they are inaccessible beyond a critical period (CP). The present study tests this hypothesis by examining the effect of age on the knowledge shown by proficient Saudi Arabic speakers of L2 English of two subtle linguistic properties associated with uninterpretable features: (i) the Gap Strategy in wh-interrogatives, and (ii) Reflexive Binding. While the former is differently instantiated in Arabic and English, the latter is similarly present in both languages. Using an acceptability preference task, results show that fossilization is selective, and is a reflex of L1–L2 grammatical differences. As predicted, the advanced adult starters showed a persistent L1 effect (de- learning problem) in the acquisition of the gap strategy in wh-interrogatives, but hardly had any problems with reflexive binding. Thus, it is argued that convincing evidence to refute a maturational account should be drawn from testing contrasting structures rather than similar ones. As for the child starters, while the high-advanced group showed native-like competence in all the tested constructions, the advanced group did not. Divergence in the child starters' L2 grammar might be the effect of other factors like proficiency. 1 INTRODUCTION Selective fossilization in adult second language (L2) grammars of varied first language (L1) backgrounds is an appealing topic in L2 acquisition research. The ‘Interpretability Hypothesis’ (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) is a recent account for this phenomenon. In this account, L1 and age effects are intertwined; fossilization is predictable on the basis of whether the target property is related to uninterpretable/interpretable features, and their status in L1 compared to L2. The locus of the learnability problem is in the narrow syntax; uninterpretable features are subject to maturation, and thus are candidates for persistent divergence in the grammars of L2 late starters if not already activated in their L1. Interpretable features, on the other hand, remain accessible throughout life, rendering them unproblematic for late starters even when not activated in their L1. Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007), Hawkins et al. (2007), and Hawkins and Hattori (2006) are very recent empirical studies that report on divergent representations where an L2 property is associated with uninterpretable features not activated in L1 grammar. In these studies, (highly) proficient post-critical period L2 learners of English were targeted. Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou examined intermediate and advanced L1 Greek speakers on their knowledge of acceptable gaps vs. unacceptable resumptives in English wh-interrogatives. Testing aspectual interpretation, Hawkins et al. looked at advanced L1 speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and a mixture of verb-raising languages. Hawkins and Hattori examined how multiple

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