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

Implicational hierarchy

• This is a ranking of markedness or an implicational hierarchy.

• Having blue is more marked than having (any or all of) yellow, green, red, white, and black.

• Having green is more marked than having red…

• Like a set of implicational universals…

• Blue implies yellow Brown implies blue
• Blue implies green Pink implies brown
• Yellow or green imply red Orange implies brown
• Red implies black Gray implies brown
• Red implies white Purple implies brown

L2A?

• Our overarching theme: How much is L2/IL like a L1?

• Do L2/IL languages obey the language universals that hold of native languages?

• This question is slightly less theory-laden than the questions we were asking about principles and parameters, although it’s similar…

• To my knowledge nobody has studied L2 acquisitions of color terms…

Question formation

• Declarative: John will buy coffee.

• Wh-inversion: What will John buy?

• Wh-fronting: What will John buy?

• Yes/No-inversion: Will John buy coffee?

• Greenberg (1963):

• Wh-inversion implies Wh-fronting.
• Yes/No-inversion implies Wh-inversion.

Wh-inversionWh-fronting

• English, German: Both.

• What will John buy?

• Japanese Korean: neither.

• John will buy what?

• Finnish: Wh-fronting only.

• What John will buy?

• Unattested: Wh-inversion only.

• *Will John buy what?

Y/N-inversionWh-inversion

• English: Both

• Will John buy coffee? What will John buy?

• Japanese: Neither

• John will buy coffee? John will buy what?

• Lithuanian: Wh-inversion only.

• John will buy coffee? What will John buy?

• Unattested: Y/N-inversion only.

• Will John buy coffee? What John will buy?

Eckman, Moravcsik, Wirth (1989)

• L1: Korean (4), Japanese (6), Turkish (4)

• L2: English

• Note L1s chosen because they are neither/neither type languages, to avoid questions of transfer.

• Subjects tried to determine what was going on in a scene by asking questions.

Eckman, Moravcsik, Wirth (1989)

• Example Y/N Qs:

• Did she finished two bottle wine?
• Is Lou and Patty known each other?
• Sue does drink orange juice?
• Her parents are rich?
• Is this story is chronological in a order?
• Does Joan has a husband?
• Yesterday is Sue did drink two bottles of wine?

Eckman, Moravcsik, Wirth (1989)

• Example Wh-Qs:

• Why Sue didn’t look solution for her problem?
• Where Sue is living?
• Why did Sue stops drinking?
• Why is Patty’s going robbing the bank?
• What they are radicals?
• What Sue and Patty connection?
• Why she was angry?

Eckman et al. (1989) wh-inv wh-fronting? results

Eckman et al. (1989) YN-inv. wh-inv.? results

Eckman, Moravcsik, Wirth (1989)

Eckman’s Markedness Differential Hypothesis

• Markedness. A phenomenon or structure X in some language is relatively more marked than some other phenomenon or structure Y if cross-linguistically the presence of X in a language implies the presence of Y, but the presence of Y does not imply the presence of X.

• Duals imply plurals.
• Wh-inversion implies wh-fronting.
• Blue implies red.

• (…but what counts as a “phenomenon or structure”?)

Markedness Differential Hypothesis

• MDH: The areas of difficulty that a second language learner will have can be predicted on the basis of a comparison of the NL and TL such that:

• Those areas of the TL that are different from the NL and are relatively more marked than in the NL will be difficult;
• The degree of difficulty associated with those aspects of the TL that are different and more marked than in the NL corresponds to the relative degree of markedness associated with those aspects;
• Those areas of the TL that are different than the NL but are not relatively more marked than in the NL will not be difficult.

• Notice that this is assuming conscious effort again. Perhaps it need not, depending on how you interpret “difficulty” but it seems like Eckman means it this way.

• Another possible way to look at it is in terms of parameter settings and (Subset Principle compliant) defaults, coupled with a FT/FA type theory…

MDH example: Word-final segments

• Voiced obstruents most marked Surge

• Voiceless obstruents Coke

• Sonorant consonants Mountain

• Vowels least marked Coffee

• All Ls allow vowels word-finally—some only allow vowels. Some (e.g., Mandarin, Japanese) allow only vowels and sonorants. Some (e.g., Polish) allow vowels, sonorants, but only voiceless obstruents. English allows all four types.

Eckman (1981)

MDH example: Word-final segments

• Voiced obstruents most marked Surge

• Voiceless obstruents Coke

• Sonorant consonants Mountain

• Vowels least marked Coffee

• Idea: Mandarin has neither voiceless nor voiced obstruents in the L1—using a voiceless obstruent in place of a TL voiced obstruent is still not L1 compliant and is a big markedness jump. Adding a vowel is L1 compliant. Spanish has voiceless obstruents, to using a voiceless obstruent for a TL voiced obstruent is L1 compliant.

MDH and IL

• The MDH presupposes that the IL obeys the implicational universals too.

• Eckman et al. (1989) suggests that this is at least reasonable.

• The MDH suggests that there is a natural order of L2A along a markedness scale (stepping to the next level of markedness is easiest).

• Let’s consider what it means that an IL obeys implicational universals…

MDH and IL

• IL obeys implicational universals.

• That is, we know that IL is a language.

• So, we know that languages are such that having word-final voiceless obstruents implies that you also have word-final sonorant consonants, among other things.

• What would happen if we taught Japanese L2 learners of English only—and at the outset—voiced obstruents?

Generalizing with markedness scales

• Voiced obstruents most marked Surge

• Voiceless obstruents Coke

• Sonorant consonants Mountain

• Vowels least marked Coffee

• Japanese learner of English will have an easier time at each step learning voiceless obstruents and then voiced obstruents.

• But—if taught voiced obstruents immediately, the fact that the IL obeys implicational (markedness) universals means that voiceless obstruents “come for free.”

Nifty!

• Does it work? Does it help?

• Answers seem to be:

• Yes, it seems to at least sort of work.
• Maybe it helps.

• Learning a marked structure is harder. So, if you learn a marked structure, you can automatically generalize to the less marked structures, but was it faster than learning the easier steps in succession would have been?

The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• Keenan & Comrie (1977) observed a hierarchy among the kinds of relative clauses that languages allow.

• The astronaut [(that) I met yesterday].

• Head noun: astronaut

• Modifying clause: (that/who) I met — yesterday.

• Compare: I met the astronaut yesterday.

• This is an object relative because the place where the head noun would be in the simple sentence version is the object.

The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• There are several kinds of relative clauses, based on where the head noun “comes from” in the modifying clause:

• The astronaut…

• [I met — yesterday] object
• [who — met me yesterday] subject
• [I gave a book to —] indirect object
• [I was talking about —] obj. of P
• [whose house I like —] Genitive (possessor)
• [I am braver than —] obj. of comparative

The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• Turns out: Languages differ in what positions they allow relative clauses to be formed on.

• English allows all the positions mentioned to be used to make relative clauses.

• Arabic allows relative clauses to be formed only with subjects.

• Greek allows relative clauses to be formed only with subjects or objects.

Resumptive pronouns

• The guy who they don’t know whether he wants to come.

• A student who I can’t make any sense out of the papers he writes.

• The actress who Tom wondered whether her father was rich.

• In cases where relative clause formation is not allowed, it can sometimes be salvaged by means of a pronoun in the position that the head noun is to be associated with.

NPAH and resumptive pronouns

• Generally speaking, it turns out that in languages which do not allow relative clauses to be formed off a certain position, they will instead allow relative clauses with a resumptive pronoun in that position.

• Arabic: allows only subject relative clauses. But for all other positions allows a resumptive pronoun construction, analogous to:

• The book that John bought it.
• The tree that John is standing by it.
• The astronaut that John gave him a present.

NPAH

• The positions off which you can relativize appears to be an implicational hierarchy.

Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• More generally, there seems to be a hierarchy of “difficulty” (or “(in)accessibility”) in the types of relative clauses.

• A language which allows this…

• Subj > Obj > IO > OPrep > Poss > OComp

Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• More generally, there seems to be a hierarchy of “difficulty” (or “(in)accessibility”) in the types of relative clauses.

• A language which allows this…

• Will also allow these.

• Subj > Obj > IO > OPrep > Poss > OComp

Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy

• More generally, there seems to be a hierarchy of “difficulty” (or “(in)accessibility”) in the types of relative clauses.

• A language which allows this…

• Will also allow these. But not these…

• Subj > Obj > IO > OPrep > Poss > OComp

Relation to L2A?

• Suppose that KoL includes where the target language is on the NPAH.

• Do L2’ers learn the easy/unmarked/simple relative clauses before the others?

• Do L2’ers transfer the position of their L1 first?

• Does a L2’ers interlanguage grammar obey this typological generalization (if they can relativize a particular point on the NPAH, can they relativize everything higher too?)?

NPAH and L2A?

• Probably: The higher something is on the NPAH, the easier (faster) it is to learn.

• So, it might be easier to start by teaching subject relatives, then object, then indirect object, etc. At each step, the difficulty would be low.

• But, it might be more efficient to teach the (hard) object of a comparison—because if L2’ers interlanguage grammar includes whatever the NPAH describes, knowing that OCOMP is possible implies that everything (higher) on the NPAH is possible too. That is, they might know it without instruction. (Same issue as before with the phonology)

NPAH in L2A

• Very widely studied implicational universal in L2A—many people have addressed the question of whether the IL obeys the NPAH and whether teaching aa marked structure can help.

• Eckman et al. (1989) was about this second question…

Change from pre- to post-test Eckman, Bell, & Nelson (1988)

Transfer, markedness, …

• Do (2002) looked at the NPAH going the other way, EnglishKorean.

• English: Relativizes on all 6 positions.
• Korean: Relativizes on 5 (not OCOMP)

Transfer, markedness, …

• The original question Do was looking at was: Do English speakers transfer their position on the NPAH to the IL Korean?

• But look: If English allows all 6 positions, why do some of the learners only relativize down to DO, some to IO, some to OPREP?

• It looks like they started over.

Subset principle?

• Null subject parameter

• Option (a): Null subjects are permitted.
• Option (b): Null subjects are not permitted.

• Italian = option a, English = option b.

Reminder: Subset Principle

• The idea is

• If one has only positive evidence, and
• If parameters are organized in terms of permissiveness,
• Then for a parameter setting to be learnable, the starting point needs to be the subset setting of the parameter.

• The Subset principle says that learners should start with the English setting of the null subject parameter and move to the Italian setting if evidence appears.

Reminder: Subset Principle

• The Subset Principle is basically that learners are conservative—they only assume a grammar sufficient to generate the sentences they hear, allowing positive evidence to serve to move them to a different parameter setting.

• Applied to L2: Given a choice, the L2’er assumes a grammatical option that generates a subset of the what the alternative generates.

• Does this describe L2A?

• Is this a useful sense of markedness?

Subset principle and markedness

• Based on the Subset principle, we’d expect the unmarked values (in a UG where languages are learnable) to be the ones which produce the “smallest” grammars.

• Given that in L1A we don’t seem to see any “misset” parameters, we have at least indirect evidence that the Subset principle is at work. Is there any evidence for it in L2A? Do these NPAH results constitute such evidence?

Subset vs. Transfer

• The Subset Principle, if it operating, would say that L2A starts with all of the defaults, the maximally conservative grammar.

• Another, mutually exclusive possibility (parameter by parameter, anyway) is that L2A starts with the L1 setting.

• This means that for certain pairs of L1 and L2, where the L1 has the marked (superset) value and L2 has the unmarked (subset) value, only negative evidence could move the L2’er to the right setting.

• Or, some mixture of the two in different areas.

NPAH and processing?

• At least a plausible alternative to the NPAH results following from the Subset Principle is just that relative clauses formed on positions lower in the hierarchy are harder to process. Consider:

• The astronaut…

• who [IP t met me yesterday] SUB
• who [IP I [VP met t yesterday]] DO
• who [IP I [VP gave a book [PP to t ]]] IO
• who [IP I was [VP talking [PP about t ]]] OPREP
• whose house [IP I [VP like [DP t ’s house]]] GEN
• who [IP I am [AP brave [degP -er [thanP than t ]]]] OCOMP

NPAH and processing?

• If it’s about processing, then the reason L2’ers progress through the “hierarchy” might be that initially they have limited processing room—they’re working too hard at the L2 to be able to process such deep extractions.

• Why are they working so hard?

• (Well, maybe L2A is like learning history?)

NPAH and processing?

• Is the NPAH itself simply a result of processing?

• The NPAH is a typological generalization about languages not about the course of acquisition.

• Does Arabic have a lower threshhold for processing difficulty than English? Doubtful.

• The NPAH may still be real, still be a markedness hierarchy based in something grammatical, but it turns out to be confounded by processing.

• So finding evidence of NPAH position transfer is very difficult.

Subset problems?

• One problem, though, is that many of the parameters of variation we think of today don’t seem to be really in a subset-superset relation. So there has to be something else going on in these cases anyway.

• VT
• Yes: √SVAO, *SAVO
• No: *SVAO, √SAVO
• Anaphor type
• Monomorphemic: √LD, *Non-subject
• Polymorphemic: *LD, √Non-subject

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