We begin by reviewing data from Korean, Turkish, Italian and Spanish-speaking adults acquiring German without formal instruction. Our findings have shown that these learners transfer their L1 VPs: the Korean and Turkish speakers transfer a head-final VP and the Italian and Spanish speakers first transfer a head-initial VP and then switch its headedness to the correct, head-final value for German. Although functional projections in Korean and Turkish are head-final and in Italian and Spanish head-initial, all four groups of learners subsequently posit head-initial functional projections in German (which are not always target-like). We conclude that only lexical projections constitute the L2 learner's initial state; the development of functional projections is driven solely by the interaction of X'-Theory with the target-language input. We then discuss some studies on the acquisition of French by English speakers and of English by speakers of various L1s which purport to bring evidence to bear against our approach. Upon closer examination, the evidence turns out to offer further support for the position that the sole projections which the learner transfers from the L1 are lexical ones. Finally, we account for potentially problematic verb-raising data from French learners of English. Rather than taking the stance that French raising to Agr is transferred, we propose that L2 learners' identification of free morphemes as salient triggers leads to a misanalysis of verb raising in English. We also apply this idea to a reanalysis of the morpheme-order studies of the 1970s.
Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994) propose an analysis of the acquisition of German by adult Korean and Turkish speakers based on the Weak Continuity account of L1 acquisition. They claim that L2 acquisition initially involves a bare VP whose (final) headedness is transferred from the learner's L1, with functional projections evolving entirely on the basis of the interaction of X'-Theory with the input. In this article, we extend this account to data from Italian and Spanish speakers learning German. Our analysis reveals that these learners initially posit a bare VP whose (initial) headedness is transferred from their native languages but, while still at the bare VP stage, they adopt the head-final VP of German. At this bare VP stage the morphological elements incompatible with the VP are not attested (e.g., auxiliary verbs, verbs marked for agreement and obligatory subjects). At the next stage of acquisition, similar to what Vainikka and Young-Scholten observed for the Korean and Turkish speakers, the Italian and Spanish speakers posit a head-initial functional projection. This projection further resembles the first functional projection observed in the acquisition of German by children (Clahsen, 1991) and involves optional verb-raising and the emergence of elements which typically appear in INFL (auxiliaries, modals) and in Spec (IP) (obligatory subjects).We conclude that child L1 learners and adult L2 learners build up syntactic structure in much the same manner and propose that the Weak Continuity approach accounts for all instances of syntactic acquisition.
A yearlong study of the acquisition of German by three American secondary school students reveals influence of orthographic input on their segmental development in phonology. The three had not been exposed to German prior to the year they spent in Germany, they received little explicit instruction on German, and they were the only native English speakers in their communities. Examination of their production of word-initial , which is realized as [z] in German but [s] in English, points to influence of the orthographic input they received while interacting with written text as fully matriculated students in German secondary schools. Despite considerable aural input from their standard German-speaking peers, teachers, and host family members over the 12 months of their stay in Germany, the three learners' production of word-initial was typically [s]. Finer-grained analysis using Praat shows variation in voicing, suggesting these learners were also responding to the aural input.Since the formulation of the critical period hypothesis by Lenneberg (1967), there have been various takes on the hypothesis, including on the second language (L2) acquisition of phonology. These range from multiple critical periods (Seliger, 1978), a fuzzy-edged sensitive rather than critical period (Flege, 1987), to disputes about age of critical period termination. In phonology, studies have long suggested that L2 learners with early versus late exposure are two distinct populations in that younger starters are invariably superior to older starters (e.g., Ioup, 2008). We therefore expect learners' interlanguage phonologies to differ fundamentally as a function of their age of initial exposure to the L2. Yet studies dating back to the early 1980s have indicated that younger and older learners'
Since the 1980s' decoupling of the formal study of second language acquisition from pedagogical concerns, the social relevance of such research has been of little concern. Early studies, in the 1970s, of uninstructed adult learners' acquisition of morphosyntax pointed to social implications: these working class immigrants had varying levels of schooling, and it turned out that those with the least education made the slowest progress. With a shift in interest to consideration of poverty of the stimulus effects, researchers no longer needed to rely on adults who were uninstructed in the second language (L2) while immersed in the target language. Reliance on easyto-recruit middle-class secondary school and university participants has had the -unintended -consequence of diminishing the attention paid to socially excluded adult L2 learners. This has left a range of language-external factors unaddressed in second language acquisition (SLA) at the international level; however, at the local level, interest in the language acquisition and literacy development of adult immigrants has risen along with increased immigration by adults with little or no native language schooling. These adults face considerable challenges in acquiring the linguistic competence and literacy skills that support participation in the economic and social life of their new communities. Those who teach such adults have very little SLA research to refer to in dealing with increasingly politicized policies and worsening provision. A return to the type of studies conducted in West Germany and the rest of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s would serve this population of learners well.
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