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GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory

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GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory GRS LX 700 Morphology Language Acquisition In L1A, we observe that kids don’t always and provide all of the morphology that adults do. Linguistic Theory Traditionally, it was assumed that kids are learning the morphology and the syntax Week 13. L2 morphology v. and that at some point they got it (say, functional projections when they provide correct morphology 90% of the time when it was required). Morphology German and L1A CP A major recent development in the study of how DP C′ So, in German. kids come to know the (by now, known to be When a 2-year-old fabulously complicated, but yet relatively C+I IP John ate uses a finite verb, it language-independent) system of syntax was in — I′ goes in second the observation that morphological errors are by VP — position; when a 2- no means random. year-old uses a In particular, in a large number of languages, V′ nonfinite verb it remains at the end of what seems to happen is that kids produce DP — nonfinite forms of the verb—but along with that the sentence (after the object). comes the syntax associated with non-finiteness. lunch Functional categories Functional categories So, even though kids will sometimes use Rephrasing a bit, what we’re talking about is essentially nonfinite verbs, they know the difference between the structural complexity of the learner’s (L1A/L2A) finite and nonfinite verb and know how the knowledge (at a given point). grammar treats each kind. They are using T correctly. They just sometimes pick the wrong It has been pretty well established by theoretical (nonfinite) one. linguistics that adult native languages are quite complex, Now, adult L2’ers also drop a lot of morphology, containing functional phrases like AgrP, TP and CP, and will produce nonfinite forms… there is a lot of support for this idea that most if not all parametric differences stem from properties of the This raises the question (in the general ballpark abstract functional morphemes (often reflected in surface of “how much is L2A like L1A?”) as to whether morphology). second language learners show this effect as well. 1 Functional categories Functional categories Verb movement (if it conforms to the rules of adult native-speaker verb movement, anyway) The question we’re about to look at is whether adult serves as evidence for this complex functional second language learners also have this same complex structure, since the verb moves into a functional structural knowledge in their IL. Do L2’ers “know about TP” in other words? head (T, for example). The evidence we just reviewed suggests very Note that if L2’ers can usually produce sentences which strongly that kids learning German and French are grammatical in the TL but yet don’t “follow the produce sentences which comply with the rules rules” which are associated with that structure (i.e. that of adult syntax (that make reference to this only finite verbs move to T), we do not have evidence complex functional structure). Kids seem to that their mental representation of these sentences “know about” the TP and the CP and the rules includes the higher functional phrases like TP. that pertain thereto. Prévost and White (1999, 2000) Prévost and White Prévost and White try to differentiate two Prévost and White (1999, 2000) investigated this possibilities of what their data might show, given very question, and here’s what they found. that second language learners sometimes use inflected verbs and sometimes don’t. Impairment Hypothesis. The learners don’t really Like kids do during L1A, second language learners (consistently) understand the inflection or how to use it. will sometimes omit, and sometimes provide, Their knowledge of inflection is “impaired”. Their trees inflection (tense, subject agreement) on the verb. don’t contain the functional XPs. Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. The learners will sometimes pronounce finite verbs in their infinitive form However, it is different from L1A in that lack of finite (the verbs act finite, the functional XP’s are there, but the inflection on the verb does not seem to correlate with learner couldn’t find the right inflected form in his/her being treated syntactically as an infinitive. lexicon in time, so s/he used the nonfinite form). The nonfinite form is essentially a default. Prévost and White Prévost and White Possibility 1 (impairment) suggests basically no correlation between verb movement and P&W looked at spontaneous speech data inflection. from two adults learning L2 French (from Moroccan Arabic, after a year) and two Possibility 2 (mispronouncing a finite verb adults learning L2 German (from Spanish by using its nonfinite form) predicts that and Portuguese, after 3 months). Monthly When the finite form is pronounced, the verb interviews followed for about 2 years. will definitely be (and act) finite—it will move. When the nonfinite form is pronounced, it might act finite or nonfinite. 2 Prévost and White found… Prévost and White Almost no finite (inflected) verb forms in non-finite contexts. When verbs are marked with inflection, they systematically (overwhelmingly) appear before negation (i.e., they move). P&W’s data supports the hypotheses that: Many of nonfinite forms used in finite contexts (used finitely, (These) second language learners know the difference moved). between finite and nonfinite verbs. They know that finite verbs move, and that nonfinite verbs Oblig. Fin Oblig. Nonfin do not move. +Fin -Fin -Fin +Fin The only real errors they make are essentially lexical retrieval errors (errors of pronunciation), pronouncing verbs A(F) 767 243 278 17 which are abstractly finite in their infinitive form. Z(F) 755 224 156 2 One question: Why the infinitive? Is it really an unmarked A(G) 389 45 76 7 form universally? Does it depend on what the citation form is? Is it due to the language-particular morphology. Z(G) 434 85 98 6 L2A and L1A L2A and L1 One thing this tells us is that, despite We don’t know really to what extent “UG” possible appearances to the contrary, played a role, based only on this—after all, second language learners’ interlanguages we know that the L1 had the full structural are quite systematic and complex, and the complexity of a natural language, including L2 learners have the same kind of abstract the distinction (perhaps abstract) between structural knowledge incorporated into finite and nonfinite, and including (perhaps their IL that we can argue for in the case of abstract) subject agreement, etc. There’s no reason that knowledge of the distinction L1 learners. between finite and nonfinite couldn’t simply carry over (“transfer”) to the IL during L2A. Morphology ≠ syntax Morphology ≠ syntax This suggests that morphology is rather distinct Various other studies describe a similar from syntax. It is possible to have the syntax dissociation; obligatory subjects, subject right and the morphology wrong. And to some case, and verb position are all governed by extent, morphology is not provided by UG, must syntactic features/parameters attributed be learned, and moreover must be retrieved. to functional projections. And while L2’ers The view of Distributed Morphology under which morphology is a separate system given seem to get these right, they are the task of pronouncing a syntactic structure inconsistent with the morphology. (See (and which allows for the sort of defaults we White ch. 6; Lardière, White, Schwartz, seem to see) seems well suited to describe this. Prévost, …) 3 Schwartz (2002) Schwartz (2002) Last year at the BUCLD, Bonnie Schwartz Schwartz concluded that presented data of this sort looking at the gender agreement and definiteness properties of Dutch child L2 is like child L1 wrt morphology DPs, with the aim being to determine whether child L2 is like adult L2 wrt syntax child L2 acquisition was more like child L1 Again, a dissociation between acquisition or more like adult L2 acquisition. morphology and syntax. What she found was that in terms of overgeneralizing morphology (overuse of uninflected adjectives), adult L2’ers did it, but Why? Morphology is surface-evident and neither child L1’ers nor child L2’er did. But in terms of word order, both kinds of L2’er went frequent, why is there such difficulty? through a word order stage not attested in child L1’ers’ development. thoughts re: Schwartz (2002) thoughts re: Schwartz (2002) Jeff Lidz brought up the question of Harald Clahsen brought up an interesting point whether this might be due not so much to with respect to processing: there are processing results that indicate that adult L2’ers “need morphology, but to a phonological effect. longer” to process incoming data. While I’m not Either in terms of an input filter (like the sure exactly what studies he had in mind, taking French discussion earlier) or in terms of a that as given, perhaps the problem with morphology is that it just “comes too fast.” In production constraint. Phonological the same kind of way that phonological filters problems could in many ways mimic might keep morphological marking out of the morphological problems. “input data”, processing constraints might also have this effect. Language attrition It is a very common phenomenon that, having learned an L2 and having become quite proficient, one will still “forget” how to use it after a period of non-use. While very common, it’s not very surprising—it’s like calculus. If L2 is a skill like calculus, we’d expect this. 4 L1 attrition UG in L2A Much more surprising is the fact that sometimes under the influence of a dominant L2, skill in the L1 We’ve looked at the questions concerning seems to go.
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