The Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 acquisition: L1 Norwegian learners’ knowledge of syntax and morphology in L2 English

Abstract

The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008(Slabakova, , 2013 proposes that acquiring properties of the functional morphology is the most challenging part of learning a second language. In the experiment presented here, the predictions of this hypothesis are tested in the L2 English of Norwegian native speakers. Two constructions are investigated that do not match in English and Norwegian: One involving functional morphology, Subject-Verb (SV) agreement, which is obligatory in the L2 but non-existent in the L1, and one involving syntax, Verb-Second (V2) word order, which is obligatory in the L1, but restricted to specific contexts in the L2. The results of an acceptability judgement task indicate that the participants struggled more with identifying ungrammatical SV agreement than ungrammatical word order. We conclude that the findings lend tentative support to the Bottleneck Hypothesis.

The challenges imposed by L2 inflectional morphology: evidence from speeded acceptability judgment tasks with Brazilian Portuguese-English bilinguals

“…In fact, native speakers perceived the ungrammatical sentences with a missing morpheme and ungrammatical sentences with ungrammatical morpheme in a similar manner, whereas bilinguals were more tolerant to the former sentences. Therefore, our findings are in line with previous studies in second language acquisition that indicate that dropping functional morphemes is more common than oversupplying them (Jensen et al, 2019).…”

“…There is one study, nevertheless, that shows that both types of ungrammaticality can be equally problematic for bilinguals. Jensen et al (2019) investigated the learnability differences between L2 morphological and syntactic knowledge in Norwegian-English (NE) bilinguals. More specifically, the authors used an untimed acceptability judgment task to analyze the acquisition of subject-verb agreement ({~s}) and also the acquisition of the subject-verb-object (SVO) order.…”

The negative evidence hypothesis: the acquisition of the double-object construction by Brazilian-Portuguese English bilinguals

“…he Bottleneck Hypothesis, on the other hand, postulates that the most diicult structure for bilinguals to acquire is functional morphology because of the amount of information they carry and of their cross-linguistic variation. his hypothesis has been supported by studies that show bilinguals' behavior towards agreement markers (Carneiro, 2017;Jensen, 2016, Mikhaylova, 2018.…”

“L” Stands for Language

“…In Slabakova (, ), this argument was substantiated by comparing findings on the L2 acquisition of the different modules, demonstrating the superior burden and challenge of the functional morphology. Recently, Jensen and colleagues () attempted a direct syntax–morphology comparison. The researchers tested two constructions exhibiting a contrast between English and Norwegian: the verb‐second (V2) phenomenon (attested in Norwegian) and S–V agreement (not attested in Norwegian).…”

“…Accuracy Percentages in Rejecting Ungrammatical Test Items, V2 and S-V Agreement Compared Reproduced fromJensen, Slabakova, and Westergaard (2016) …”