L2 Acquisition of a Complex Stress Pattern: UG-Constrained Learning Paths in Khalkha Mongolian

Abstract

This paper examines second language (L2) acquisition of stress in Khalkha Mongolian, which is one of the few Default-to-Opposite Edge stress systems of the world, and as such, demonstrates “conflicting directionality” regarding stress assignment, resulting in the leftmost edge of a word being more prominent in certain words and the rightmost edge in certain others. Given the additional fact that the language exhibits Non-finality effects, and that, unlike English, codas are not moraic, its acquisition presents unique difficulties and challenges for English-speaking learners of the language. Many of these challenges potentially lead these learners to make Universal Grammar (UG)-unconstrained (but cognitively reasonable) assumptions about how the phonology of Mongolian works, especially since the learners do not have all the Mongolian data available to them all at once. The learning scenario here, thus, provides unique opportunities to investigate whether L2 phonologies are constrained by the options made available by UG. The findings of a semi-controlled production experiment indicate that although learners do not necessarily converge on the prosodic representations employed by native speakers of the L2 (i.e., footless intonational prominence, at least for the leftmost/default edge ‘stress’), and although certain changes to the grammar are very difficult to implement, such as switching from moraic codas to non-moraic codas, the learners nevertheless demonstrate a stage-like behavior where each step exhibits the parameter settings employed by a natural language, one that is neither like the L2 nor the L1. Conversely, despite the input leading them to do so, learners do not entertain UG-unconstrained prosodic representations, such as End-Rule-Middle or End-Rule-Variable; End-Rule is set either to Right or Left, as is expected in a system constrained by the options made available by UG. We conclude that the hypothesis space for interlanguage phonologies is determined by UG.