Transcript PowerPoint

GRS LX 700
Language
Acquisition and
Linguistic Theory
Week 8a. L2 morphology v.
functional projections
Morphology
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In L1A, we observe that kids don’t
always provide all of the morphology
that adults do.
Traditionally, it was assumed that kids
are learning the morphology and the
syntax and that at some point they got
it (say, when they provide correct
morphology 90% of the time when it
was required).
Morphology
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A major recent development in the study of
how kids come to know the (by now, known
to be fabulously complicated, but yet
relatively language-independent) system of
syntax was in the observation that
morphological errors are by no means
random.
In particular, in a large number of
languages, what seems to happen is that
kids produce nonfinite forms of the verb—
but along with that comes the syntax
associated with non-finiteness.
German and L1A
CP
C
DP
C+I
John ate
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IP
I
—
—
VP
V
DP
lunch
—
So, in German.
When a 2-year-old
uses a finite verb, it
goes in second
position; when a 2year-old uses a
nonfinite verb it
remains at the end
of the sentence
(after the object).
Functional categories
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So, even though kids will sometimes use
nonfinite verbs, they know the difference
between finite and nonfinite verb and know
how the grammar treats each kind. They are
using T correctly. They just sometimes pick
the wrong (nonfinite) one.
Now, adult L2’ers also drop a lot of
morphology, will produce nonfinite forms…
This raises the question (in the general
ballpark of “how much is L2A like L1A?”) as
to whether second language learners show
this effect as well.
Functional categories
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Rephrasing a bit, what we’re talking about is
essentially the structural complexity of the learner’s
(L1A/L2A) knowledge (at a given point).
It has been pretty well established by theoretical
linguistics that adult native languages are quite
complex, containing functional phrases like AgrP, TP
and CP, and there is a lot of support for this idea
that most if not all parametric differences stem from
properties of the abstract functional morphemes
(often reflected in surface morphology).
Functional categories
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Verb movement (if it conforms to the rules of
adult native-speaker verb movement,
anyway) serves as evidence for this complex
functional structure, since the verb moves into
a functional head (T, for example).
The evidence we just reviewed suggests very
strongly that kids learning German and French
produce sentences which comply with the
rules of adult syntax (that make reference to
this complex functional structure). Kids seem
to “know about” the TP and the CP and the
rules that pertain thereto.
What is the relation between
morphology and functional
structure?
 To the extent that we try to use morphological
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realization to diagnose functional structure, the
answer to this question is important.
Obviously, it’s not just about the surface form:
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A deer always eats my bagel. Deer are funny.
A goose always eats my bagel. Geese are funny.
A wug always eats my bagel. Wugs are funny.
I cut my bagel. I had cut my bagel. I will cut my bagel. On
Tuesdays, I cut my bagel with a penknife.
She went to class. She had gone to class. She will go to class.
On Tuesdays, she goes to class sans bagel.
She wrote a letter. She had written a letter. She will write a
letter. On Tuesdays, she writes letters about bagels.
What is the relation between
morphology and functional
structure?
 So, there is at the very least an
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abstract level of morphology, perhaps
related to the distinctions that the
surface morphology can make.
Point is: regardless of the surface
realization, plurals act plural, finite
verbs act finite.
This suggests a kind of separation
between syntax and morphology.
Rich agreement to syntax
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There is a longstanding observation, not
really originating in the acquisition literature,
that languages with rich agreement
morphology tend to also be the languages
that allow null subjects, move the verb to T.
Various attempts have been made to try to
make this an implicational relationship: The
agreement paradigm determines the
features in the syntax (e.g., strong features
forcing V to move T). (Vikner, Rohrbacher)

This would make acquisition easier—but it also doesn’t seem
to really work. There are verb-raising languages without rich
morphology, for one thing.
Syntax to morphology
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A different view, perhaps a bit more widely
adopted, is that the syntax makes available
the features and structures upon which the
morphology operates.
We might even think of this as an abstract
tree that is first built, and then “pronounced”
in a second step.

Distributed morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, see
also Schütze & Wexler 1996) works basically this
way—the syntactic features determine the
morphological shape, but as a second step, after
syntax is done.
Morphology and functional
categories
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[+3sg +pres] = -s
[+past] = -ed
—=Ø
[+masc +3sg +nom]
play+[3sg+pres]
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[+2sg +nom]
play+[2sg +past]
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he plays.
you played.
You may remember this
from a previous class. And
the question is still relevant:
But is this knowledge builtin? Hint: no.
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[+masc, +3sg, +nom] = he
[+masc, +3sg, +gen] = his
[+masc, +3sg] = him
[+fem, +3sg, +nom] = she
[+fem, +3sg] = her
[+1sg, +nom] = I
[+1sg, +gen] = my
[+1sg] = me
[+2, +gen] = your
[+2] = you
Morphology and functional
categories
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[+3sg +pres] = -s
[+past] = -ed
—=Ø
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[+masc +3sg +nom]
play+[3sg+pres]
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[+2sg +nom]
play+[2sg +past]
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
he plays.
you played.
You may remember this
from a previous class. And
the question is still relevant:
But is this knowledge builtin? Hint: no.

An important part of how this
system works is in the
“defaulting” behavior:
If the more conditions for the
more specific rule don’t match
the features available from the
syntax, turn to the next less
specific rule.
This is a means of explaining
the syncretism in paradigms:
multiple abstractly different
forms sharing the same surface
form:
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I played. You played. She played.
I play. You play. She plays.
Morphology and functional
categories
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[+3sg +pres] = -s
[+past] = -ed
—=Ø
he plays.
[+2sg +nom]
play+[2sg +past]
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[+masc +3sg +nom]
play+[3sg+pres]
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you played.
You may remember this
from a previous class. And
the question is still relevant:
But is this knowledge builtin? Hint: no.

The morphological paradigms
differ across languages, as do
their patterns of syncretism.
This needs to be learned. The
building blocks may be available
courtesy of UG, but the patterns
themselves have to come from
the input.
For L1’ers, we don’t see a lot of
evidence for incomplete learning
of this mapping, they generally
have it down as soon as we can
tell whether they do or not.
Still, there are sometimes default
forms (bare verbs) which we’ve
attributed to a working
morphology and a deficient
syntax. (In targeted ways—e.g.,
missing TP or AgrP or their
features)
Morphology and functional
categories
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[+3sg +pres] = -s
[+past] = -ed
—=Ø
[+masc +3sg +nom]
play+[3sg+pres]
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
he plays.
[+2sg +nom]
play+[2sg +past]

you played.
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For L2’ers, it’s just as necessary to
learn these paradigms
(=morphological rules).
What might happen if, in the heat
of an argument, the
morphological component fails to
retrieve the more specific rule?
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You may remember this
from a previous class. And
the question is still relevant:
But is this knowledge builtin? Hint: no.
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He played the trombone last night.
No! He never plays the trombone!
play [3sg, pres]
[+3sg+pres] = -s
[+past] = Ø
—=Ø
No! He never play the trombone!
Functional categories
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The question we’re about to look at is whether
adult second language learners also have the
same complex structural knowledge (as native
speakers and/or as demonstrated by L1’ers) in their
IL. Do L2’ers “know about TP” in other words?
Note that if L2’ers can usually produce sentences
which are grammatical in the TL but yet don’t
“follow the rules” which are associated with that
structure (i.e. that only finite verbs move to T), we
do not have evidence that their mental
representation of these sentences includes the
higher functional phrases like TP.
The responsibilities of TP/AgrP
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Several studies have found that while
inflection appears to be relatively poor,
other things that Agr/TP are responsible
for seem to be there.
% in obligatory
contexts
3sg
Past
Suppl.
Be
Overt Nom
subj.
V in VP
Haznedar 2001
46.5
25.5
89
99
99.9
—
Ionin & Wexler 2002
22
42
80.5
98
—
100
Lardiere 1998a,b
4.5
34.5
90
98
100
100
Prévost and White (1999, 2000)
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Prévost and White (1999, 2000) investigated
the question of how other reflexes of
finiteness correlate with overt morphology…
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Essentially: Can Poeppel & Wexler (1993) style results
be obtained by L2’ers?
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Like kids do during L1A, second language learners will
sometimes omit, and sometimes provide, inflection
(tense, subject agreement) on the verb.
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Does lack of inflection correlate with the verb being
treated as a non-finite form syntactically?
Prévost and White
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Prévost and White try to differentiate two
possibilities of what their data might show, given
that second language learners sometimes use
inflected verbs and sometimes don’t.
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Impairment Hypothesis. The learners don’t really
(consistently) understand the inflection or how to use it.
Their knowledge of inflection is “impaired”. Their trees
don’t contain the functional XPs.
Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. The learners
will sometimes pronounce finite verbs in their infinitive
form (the verbs act finite, the functional XP’s are there, but
the learner couldn’t find the right inflected form in his/her
lexicon in time, so s/he used the nonfinite form). The
nonfinite form is essentially a default.
Prévost and White
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Possibility 1 (impairment) suggests basically no
correlation between verb movement and
inflection.
Possibility 2 (mispronouncing a finite verb by
using its nonfinite form) predicts that
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When the finite form is pronounced, the verb will
definitely be (and act) finite—it will move.
When the nonfinite form is pronounced, it might act
finite or nonfinite.
Prévost and White
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P&W looked at spontaneous speech
data from two adults learning L2 French
(from Moroccan Arabic, after a year)
and two adults learning L2 German
(from Spanish and Portuguese, after 3
months). Monthly interviews followed
for about 2 years.
Prévost and White found…
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Almost no finite (inflected) verb forms in non-finite contexts.
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That is: It is not random.
When verbs are marked with inflection, they systematically
(overwhelmingly) appear before negation (i.e., they move).
Many of nonfinite forms used in finite contexts (used finitely, moved).
Oblig. Fin
Oblig. Nonfin
+Fin
-Fin
-Fin
+Fin
A(F)
767
243
278
17
Z(F)
755
224
156
2
A(G)
389
45
76
7
Z(G)
434
85
98
6
Prévost and White
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P&W’s data supports the hypotheses that:
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(These) second language learners know the difference
between finite and nonfinite verbs.
They know that finite verbs move, and that nonfinite verbs
do not move.
The only real errors they make are essentially lexical
retrieval errors (errors of pronunciation), pronouncing verbs
which are abstractly finite in their infinitive form.
One question: Why the infinitive? Is it really an unmarked
form universally? Does it depend on what the citation form
is? Is it due to the language-particular morphology?
L2A and L1A

One thing this tells us is that, despite
possible appearances to the contrary,
second language learners’
interlanguages are quite systematic
and complex, and the L2 learners
have the same kind of abstract
structural knowledge incorporated into
their IL that we can argue for in the
case of L1 learners.
L2A and L1
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We don’t know really to what extent “UG”
played a role, based only on this—after all, we
know that the L1 had the full structural
complexity of a natural language, including
the distinction (perhaps abstract) between
finite and nonfinite, and including (perhaps
abstract) subject agreement, etc. There’s no
reason that knowledge of the distinction
between finite and nonfinite couldn’t simply
carry over (“transfer”) to the IL during L2A.
Morphology ≠ syntax
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This suggests that morphology is rather distinct
from syntax. It is possible to have the syntax
right and the morphology wrong. And to some
extent, morphology is not provided by UG,
must be learned, and moreover must be
retrieved.
The view of Distributed Morphology under
which morphology is a separate system given
the task of pronouncing a syntactic structure
(and which allows for the sort of defaults we
seem to see) seems well suited to describe this.
Morphology ≠ syntax

Various other studies describe a similar
dissociation; obligatory subjects, subject
case, and verb position are all governed
by syntactic features/parameters
attributed to functional projections. And
while L2’ers seem to get these right, they
are inconsistent with the morphology.
(See White ch. 6; Lardière, White,
Schwartz, Prévost, …)
Schwartz (2002)
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In 2002 at the BUCLD, Bonnie Schwartz
presented data of this sort looking at the
gender agreement and definiteness properties
of Dutch DPs, with the aim being to determine
whether child L2 acquisition was more like child
L1 acquisition or more like adult L2 acquisition.
What she found was that in terms of
overgeneralizing morphology (overuse of
uninflected adjectives), adult L2’ers did it, but
neither child L1’ers nor child L2’er did. But in
terms of word order, both kinds of L2’er went
through a word order stage not attested in child
L1’ers’ development.
Schwartz (2002)
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Schwartz concluded that
child L2 is like child L1 wrt morphology
 child L2 is like adult L2 wrt syntax
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Again, a dissociation between
morphology and syntax.
Why? Morphology is surface-evident
and frequent, why is there such
difficulty?
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