The Acquisition of the Ip System in Child L2 English

Abstract

This study examines the acquisition of the inflectional system by a Turkish child learner of English. Results from longitudinal data collected over 18 months are reported, presenting counterevidence for recent hypotheses on early L2 acquisition according to which missing functional items reflect missing functional categories (e.g., Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996a, 1996b). Despite robust evidence for the early production of copula be, auxiliary be, and overt subjects, the child L2 data analyzed in this paper do not show any evidence for tense and agreement morphology in the early stages of L2 development. In other words, although some functional elements related to IP are missing, the learner is able to perform other morphological and syntactic operations involving the functional projection IP. These findings lead us to question whether the lack of functional elements entails the lack of functional categories.

The acquisition of tense in English: Distinguishing child second language from first language and specific language impairment

“…Numerous studies have shown that child English L2 learners also display variable use of tense morphemes in their interlanguage (Dulay & Burt, 1973, 1974Gavruseva, 2002Gavruseva, , 2004Haznedar, 2001;Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Jia & Fuse, 2007;Lakshmanan, 1994;Paradis, 2005). The more particular question for our purposes is whether they show the (E)OI patterns as described above in their use of optional infinitives.…”

“…For example, researchers have documented precocious emergence and mastery of BE in L2 English (Dulay & Burt, 1974;Gavruseva, 2002;Haznedar, 2001;Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Jia & Fuse, 2007;Lakshmanan, 1994;Schwartz, 2004;Zobl & Liceras, 1994). In Haznedar's (2001) case study, the Turkish L1-English L2 boy used copula BE over 90% accurately after four months exposure, while inflectional tense morphemes were produced less than 75% correctly in context after 17 months of exposure (Haznedar, 2001, p. 32-39). Ionin & Wexler (2002) found that a group of Russian L1-English L2 children omitted 3S[-s] 78% and PAST[-ed] 58% in context, while omitting BE copula 16% and BE auxiliary 33% in context (Ionin & Wexler, 2002, p. 106).…”

“…In addition, most morphology-before-syntax accounts have been developed on the basis of adult L2 data, with implicit or explicit assumptions about limitations in ultimate attainment for L2 learners. By contrast, syntaxbefore-morphology accounts have been proposed to account for the profile displayed by both child and adult L2 learners.Proponents of the MSIH argue that variable use of grammatical morphemes is caused by the inability to access the correct morphophonological form in speech production post-syntax, rather than by the presence of underlying deficiencies in functional features, syntactic structure, or the presence of developmental principles like the (E)UCC (Haznedar, 2001(Haznedar, , 2006Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997;Lardiere, 1998Lardiere, , 2000 Prévost & White, 2000a,b;White 2003b). Lardiere (1998Lardiere ( , 2000 characterizes variable use of morphology by L2 learners as a mapping problem between functional features in the syntax and the appropriate forms in the lexicon.…”

The gradual acquisition of clitic “se” in Spanish L2

“…Moreover, for L2 syntax acquisition, where learners can experience minimal exposure to the second language in the natural environment, and, where there is no explicit teaching of functional heads and syntactic configurations absent in the L1, the situation may be even more difficult. Crucially the study of how L2 learners acquire these non-native configurations is particularly interesting for research on whether morphological knowledge is dependent on the syntactic knowledge of the language as put forward in Prévost and White (2000), White (2003), Haznedar (2001;, Lardiere (2000;2008) and references there-in.…”

Review article: Knowledge of features in fossilized second language grammars

“…On the one hand, the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) (Tsimpli and Roussou, 1991;Smith and Tsimpli, 1995;Hawkins and Chan, 1997) proposes that grammars fossilize because grammatical features, which constitute the basis of linguistic representations, are only accessible during first language acquisition. On the other hand, the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997;Lardiere and Schwartz, 1997;Prévost and White, 2000;Haznedar, 2001) proposes that deficits observed in stable grammars are not to be explained by the misrepresentation of formal features, but rather by problems with the mapping of those abstract features onto their corresponding surface forms. Under the latter view, and in contrast with FFFH, fossilization is not directly related to the availability to Universal Grammar (UG) but to a deficit in the interaction between the core syntax, which is unimpaired, with other grammatical modules subject to maturational constraints.…”