Grs LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory Week Transfer and the “initial state” for L2A. And other things

The way to think of this is that there is a progression of stages, but that adjacent stages often co-exist for a time—so, “between” the VP and TP stages, some utterances are VPs, some are TPs.

This might be perhaps comparable to knowledge of register in one’s L1, except that there is a definite progression.

V&YS summary

• So, Vainikka & Young-Scholten propose that L2A is acquired by “building up” the syntactic tree—that beginner L2’ers have syntactic representations of their utterances which are lacking the functional projections which appear in the adult L1’s representations, but that they gradually acquire the full structure.

• V&YS also propose that the information about the VP is borrowed wholesale from the L1, that there is no stage prior to having just a VP.

• Lastly, V&YS consider this L2A to be just like L1A in course of acquisition (though they leave open the question of speed/success/etc.)

Problems with Minimal Trees

• White (2003) reviews a number of difficulties that the Minimal Trees account has.

• Data seems to be not very consistent.

• Evidence for DP and NegP from V&YS’s own data.
• E->F kids manage to get V left of pas (Grondin & White 1996)
• but cf. Hawkins et al. next week. Also, these are kids who might have benefited from earlier exposure to French.
• V&YS also propose at one point that V->T is the default value.
• Some examples of early embedded clauses and SAI (evidence of CP) but V&YS’s criteria would also lead to the conclusion of no IP at the same point. (Gavruseva & Lardiere 1996).

Problems with Minimal Trees

• Criteria for stages are rather arbitrary.

• V&YS count something as acquired if it appears more than 60% of the time. Why 60%? For kids, the arbitrary cutoff is often set at 90%.

• Is morphology really the best indicator of knowledge?

• Prévost & White, discussed a couple of weeks hence, say “no”— better is to look at the properties like word order that the functional categories are supposed to be responsible for.

• To account for apparent V2 without CP, V&YS need a weird German story in which TP/AgrP starts out head-initial but is later returned to its proper head-final status.

Paradis et al. (1998)

• Paradis et al. (1998) looked at 15 English-speaking children in Québec, learning French (since kindergarten, interviewed at the end of grade one), and sought to look for evidence for (or against) this kind of “tree building” in their syntax.

• They looked at morphology to determine when the children “controlled” it (vs. producing a default) and whether there was a difference between the onset of tense and the onset of agreement.

• On one interpretation of V&YS, they predict that tense should be controlled before agreement, since TP is lower in the tree that AgrP.

Paradis et al. (1998)

• Agr reliably before T

• 3pl late (of agreements).
• Future late (of tenses).

Paradis et al. (1998)

• So, the interpretation of this information might be that:

• (Child) L2A does seem to progress in stages.

• This isn’t strictly compatible with the tree building approach, however, if TP is lower than AgrP. It would require slight revisions to make this work out (not necessarily drastic revisions).

Eubank: Valueless Features Hypothesis

• Another contender for the title of Theory of the Initial State is the “Valueless Features Hypothesis” of Eubank (1993/4).

• Like Minimal Trees, the VFH posits essentially that functional parameters are not initially set (not transferred from the L1).

• Unlike Minimal Trees, the VFH does assume that the entire functional structure is there. But, e.g., for V->T, the parameter/feature value that determines whether V moves to T is “undefined”.

VFH

• The interpretation of a “valueless” feature is the crucial point here. It’s not clear really what this should mean, but Eubank takes it to mean something like “not consistently on or off”. Hence, again using V->T as an example, the verb is predicted to sometimes raise (V->T on) and sometimes not (V->T off). E.g., either is fine in L2 English of:

• Pat eats often apples.
• Pat often eats apples.

VFH and V->T

• In fact (as we’ll discuss more carefully in a couple of weeks), White did a well-known series of experiments on F>L2E learners that did show that the learners accepted both.

• Pat eats often apples.
• Pat often eats apples.

• Eubank takes this as evidence for VFH, but White (1992, 2003) notes that it’s unexpected for the VFH that they don’t also allow verb raising past negation.

• *Pat eats not apples.
• Pat does not eat apples.

Yuan (2001) and {F,E}>L2C

• Yuan (2001) looked at E>L2C and F>L2C learners’ responses to alternative verb-adverb orders in Chinese. L1 Chinese allows only Adv-V order (no raising).

• Zhangsan changchang kan dianshi.
• *Zhangsan kan changchang dianshi.
•