Child Second Language Acquisition of Syntax

Lakshmanan, Usha

doi:10.1017/s0272263100014224

Cited by 28 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…Child L2A shares representational and developmental properties of both L1A and adult L2A and hence it is a valuable tool in the general picture of language acquisition (Lakshmanan, 1995;Schwartz, 1992Schwartz, , 2003Schwartz, , 2004. The child L2 learner is cognitively more mature than the child L1 acquirer but less mature than the adult L2 learner, she is affected by the existence of the L1 grammar and she is remarkably successful in ultimate attainment studies.…”

Section: The Importance Of Child L2amentioning

confidence: 99%

Child L2 English acquisition of subject properties in an immersion bilingual context

Ballester

2012

Second Language Research

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Although thoroughly analysed in adult second language acquisition (L2A), the acquisition of subject properties in child L2A has not received so much attention and the majority of studies deal with longitudinal data or only with a single subject property. This study contributes new cross-sectional data from 5-year-old Spanish children acquiring second language (L2) English in an immersion bilingual context with age of onset three and analyses the acquisition of all the subject properties traditionally associated as a cluster in comparison to a monolingual control group of the same age. The data were obtained by means of an orally elicited judgement/correction experimental task and enabled us to explore the children's awareness of grammaticality contrasts in their L2, the influence of their L1 after two years of exposure and the extent to which the cluster of subject properties traditionally associated and studied together develop similarly in acquisitional terms. Results suggest that 5-year-old children show sensitivity to grammaticality contrasts in their L2 English and indicate that even after two years of exposure and although the age of onset of acquisition was only three, their L2 is influenced by their first language (L1) subject properties, although developmental effects also need to be taken into account when explaining the results.

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Section: The Importance Of Child L2amentioning

confidence: 99%

Child L2 English acquisition of subject properties in an immersion bilingual context

Ballester

2012

Second Language Research

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“…From the second half of the 1980s until the late 1990s, the null subject phenomenon was extensively studied in L2 acquisition (Hilles 1991;Lakshmanan 1991Lakshmanan , 1994Lakshmanan , 1995Vainikka and Young-Sholten 1994;White 1985White , 1986. These studies analyse the null subject as pro, and investigate the null subject phenomenon mainly from the following two perspectives: (a) the L2 acquisition of the 'cluster of properties' associated with pro-drop, i.e., null versus overt subjects, the availability of VS word order in declaratives, and the possibility of extracting subjects across overt complementizers; and (b) the relationship between null subjects and verb inflections.…”

Section: L2 Acquisiton Of Null Subjects: Existing Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The syntax and interpretation of embedded null subjects in Chinese, and their acquisition by English-speaking learners

Zhao¹

2011

EUROSLA

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This article reports an investigation of embedded null subjects in both L1 and L2 Chinese. Chinese null embedded subjects can refer either to a matrix subject or to a discourse entity. In the Government-Binding (GB) framework, these two possibilities resulted from the null subject being either pro or a variable. Neither pro nor a variable is compatible with the assumptions of the more recent Minimalist Program, however. This article proposes an alternative account for null embedded subjects in Chinese that is consistent with the Minimalist Program: deletion of the anaphor ziji and deletion of a topic under identity with appropriate antecedents. It then reports a study of knowledge of such deletion in the Chinese of L2 speakers. Although the existing literature has found that embedded null subjects are allowed by L2 learners of Chinese at early stages of development, no research has investigated whether they are interpreted in a target-like way by L2 speakers. A picture judgment task and a written interpretation task showed that English-speaking learners of high-intermediate proficiency in Chinese allow an embedded null subject to refer to the matrix subject, but not to a discourse entity. It is only at advanced proficiency that L2 speakers allow co-reference with both a matrix subject and a discourse entity. The implications of these results are discussed.

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“…Such invocation of proficiency is "quite at odds with the general thinking in monolingual child language research today" (De Houwer, 1998, p. 259), leading the author to question whether the notion of dominance is needed at all in connection with young bilingual children. We adopt the view that language acquisition research should be concerned with investigating a learner's knowledge that underlies language use and proficiency (Lakshmanan, 1995). Knowledge of language is taken to be a mentally represented grammar (Chomsky, 1986).…”

Section: Defining Language Dominancementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Language Dominance in Bilingual Acquisition: A Case for Mean Length Utterance Differentials

Yip¹,

Matthews²

2006

Language Assessment Quarterly

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The notion of language dominance is often defined in terms of proficiency. We distinguish dominance, as a property of the bilingual mind and a concept of language knowledge, from proficiency, as a concept of language use. We discuss ways in which language dominance may be assessed, with a focus on measures of mean length of utterance (MLU). Comparison of MLU in the child's 2 languages is subject to questions of comparability across languages. Using the Hong Kong Bilingual corpus of Cantonese-English children's development, we show how MLU differentials can be a viable measure of dominance that captures asymmetrical development where there is an imbalance between the child's 2 languages. The directionality of syntactic transfer goes primarily from the language with higher MLU value to the language with lower MLU value, and the MLU differential matches the pervasiveness of transfer effects, as in the case of null objects discussed here: The greater the differential, the more frequent the occurrence of null objects. Cantonese-dominant children with a larger MLU differential use null objects more frequently than those with a lower MLU differential. In our case studies, MLU differentials also matched with language preferences and silent periods but did not predict the directionality of code-mixing.

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Child Second Language Acquisition of Syntax

Cited by 28 publications

References 70 publications

Child L2 English acquisition of subject properties in an immersion bilingual context

Child L2 English acquisition of subject properties in an immersion bilingual context

The syntax and interpretation of embedded null subjects in Chinese, and their acquisition by English-speaking learners

Assessing Language Dominance in Bilingual Acquisition: A Case for Mean Length Utterance Differentials

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