Psycholinguistic evidence for split intransitivity in Spanish second language acquisition

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVINA MONTRUL
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
On Line ◽  
English Speaking

This study investigates the acquisition and on-line processing of unaccusative and unergative verbs in second language (L2) Spanish by English-speaking learners. It asks whether L2 learners make a syntactic distinction between the two verb classes and whether there is an effect of semantic subclass, in accordance with a semantic hierarchy. Participants were 35 native Spanish speakers and 44 English-speaking learners of Spanish ranging from intermediate to advanced proficiency. The main task was an on-line visual probe recognition task. Subjects read sentences on a computer screen and had to decide whether a word had appeared in the sentence. The results of this study showed that native speakers who scan their syntactic representations to find a word contained in a complex subject noun phrase recognized the word faster with unaccusative-verb sentences than with unergative-verb sentences, suggesting that the syntactic presence of a trace in unaccusative-verb sentences facilitates comprehension. The L2 learners showed a similar response pattern, confirming that they differentiated between the two classes of verbs. Analyses of reaction times by verb class indicated that not all of the verbs in each class were responded to consistently: some subclasses induced shorter reaction times than others.

WORD CLASS DISTINCTIONS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Zyzik ◽  
Clara Azevedo
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Morphological Knowledge ◽  
Incomplete Knowledge ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Word Classes

Although the problem of word class has been explored in numerous first language studies, relatively little is known about this process in SLA. The present study measures second language (L2) learners’ knowledge of word class distinctions (e.g., noun vs. adjective) in a variety of syntactic contexts. English-speaking learners of Spanish from third-semester and third-year courses (N= 240) completed a receptive task that presented contrasting forms belonging to the same word family (e.g.,feliz“happy” andfelicidad“happiness”). The results indicate that learners from both groups are often unable to distinguish among word classes. In particular, learners have significant difficulty in discriminating between adjectives and nouns. Although ambiguous surface morphology contributes to word class confusions, the results suggest that L2 learners do not always recognize derivational suffixes that clearly mark word class. These difficulties are interpreted as stemming from weak syntactic morphological knowledge as well as incomplete knowledge of L2 distributional regularities.

scholarly journals On the second language acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Advanced Level ◽  
Test Items ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
French And English ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Object Marking

This study, a partial replication of Bruhn de Garavito (1999a; 1999b), investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults at an advanced level of proficiency. The L2 acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by native French and English speakers instantiates a potential learnability problem, because (1) the constructions are superficially very similar ( se V DP) but display distinct idiosyncratic morphological and syntactic behaviour; (2) neither exists in English, and the reflexive impersonal does not exist in French; and (3) differences between the two are typically not subject to explicit instruction. Participants - 13 English, 16 French and 27 Spanish speakers (controls) - completed a 64-item grammaticality-judgement task. Results show that L2 learners could in general differentiate grammatical from ungrammatical items, but they performed significantly differently from the control group on most sentence types. A look at the participants’ accuracy rates indicates that few L2 learners performed accurately on most sentence types. Grammatical and ungrammatical test items involving [+animate] DPs preceded or not by the object-marking preposition a were particularly problematic, as L2 learners judged them both as grammatical. These results confirm that the L2 acquisition of Spanish reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals by French- and English-speaking adults instantiates a learnability problem, not yet overcome at an advanced level of proficiency.

scholarly journals An Experimental Study of L2 Acquisition of Mandarin Unaccusative Verbs by English-Speaking Learners

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Shee Hei Wong ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking

The present study investigates the acquisition of Chinese Mandarin unacussative verbs by English-speaking L2 leaners of Chinese, in light of Universal Grammar and Interlanguage (IL) phenomenon. The results of the experiment show that there is no strong evidence for the overpassivization of Mandarin unaccusative verbs, which calls into question the claim that the overpassivization phenomenon of unaccusative verbs is universal in second language acquisition (SLA). The L2 learners in our experiment performed better with non-alternating unaccusative verbs than alternating unaccusative verbs, which might suggest that learners were probably treating the alternating unaccusative verbs in our experiment as underlyingly transitive and thus accepted the ungrammatical passivized unaccusative verbs in the Grammaticality Judgement task. This phenomenon is consistent with child’s L1 development. We attribute the overpassivization of the Chinese unaccusative verbs in our experiment to the hypothesis of non-target lexical causativization as in L2 acquisition of English.

A lexical semantic approach to the L2 acquisition of Spanish psych verbs

2022 ◽  
pp. 026765832110662
Author(s):  
Becky Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Psych Verbs ◽  
L2 Learners

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference across verb classes, represented here as a difference in formal feature strength. To fully acquire the relevant grammatical distribution, L2 learners must successfully acquire (i) licensing restrictions on argument structure and (ii) underlying lexical semantic representations of individual verbs. Three groups of L2 learners ( n = 66) and a group of native Spanish speakers ( n = 19) completed two judgment tasks (one with aural stimuli and one with written stimuli) which presented object experiencer psych verbs in multiple argument structures. Results show that advanced L2 learners are largely sensitive to the distribution tested here; however, while they have acquired relevant licensing restrictions, they may associate fixed feature settings with verbs that allow variable feature settings. These results are consistent with predictions made by the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis and highlight the role of lexical semantic features in second language acquisition.

scholarly journals Language Mode Influences Language-Specific Categorization

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-123
Author(s):  
Haily Merritt
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
First Language ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Multiple Languages ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

The present study aims to fill a gap at the intersection of the phenomena of language mode—the state of activation of the bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms—and the subset problem—issues learners face when the second language has fewer of some kind of contrast than the first language. When the subset problem is present in second language acquisition, learners may struggle to acquire specific contrasts of a language and may map them incorrectly to their first language. By studying advanced learners of Spanish and considering language mode, we are able to investigate whether learners create separate categories for Spanish vowels—as opposed to simply adapting their English categories—and whether the use of such categories depends on the language being perceived. Spanish and English serve as convenient languages for study of these phenomena because Spanish has fewer vowels than English. With this, we ask: “Does language mode influence language-specific categorization?” To investigate this question, we had native English-speaking, proficient Spanish learners perform an AX task in both English and Spanish, where they identified whether two aurally presented vowel stimuli were the same or different. There was no strong effect of language mode across conditions, but we found that reaction times were significantly slower and that error rates were higher in tasks that included stimuli from more than one language. Thus, we conclude that when multiple languages are activated it is more difficult to process a given language.

Phonetic feature size in second language acquisition: Examining VOT in voiceless and voiced stops

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110089
Author(s):  
Daniel J Olson
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Stop Consonant ◽  
Acoustic Similarity ◽  
Stop Consonants ◽  
Voiceless Stop ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or ‘size’ of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. Analysis focused on the change in voice onset time, for both voiceless (i.e. trained) and voiced (i.e. non-trained) phonemes, across the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. The results demonstrated a significant improvement (i.e. reduction) in voice onset time for voiceless stops, which were subject to the training paradigm. In contrast, there was no significant change in the non-trained voiced stop consonants. These results suggest a limited featural relationship, with independent voice onset time (VOT) cues for voiceless and voices phonemes. Possible underlying mechanisms that limit feature generalization in second language (L2) phonetic production, including gestural considerations and acoustic similarity, are discussed.

scholarly journals Subjacency Violations in Second Language Acquisition: Some Evidence from Chinese Mandarin Speakers of L2 English

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Xia Dai
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Follow Up Study ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Mandarin Speakers

The literature review shows that many previous studies have used Subjacency to test the availability of UniversalGrammar (UG) in second language acquisition. Schachter (1989) claimed that L2 learners do not have access to UGprinciples, while Hawkins and Chan (1997) suggested that L2 learners had partial availability of UG, for they foundthere was a strong difference between the elementary L2 learners and the advanced L2 learners in judging theungrammaticality of Subjacency violations; that is, the elementary L2 learners owned the highest accuracy. Underthe hypothesis of partially availability of UG in second language acquisition, L2 learners are only able to acquire theproperties instantiated in their L1s. Although they may accept violations of universal constraints, it is only at facevalue; rather the L2 learners develop different syntactic representations from the native speakers. This study has beenundertaken as a follow-up study of Hawkins and Chan (1997), and tested on L1 Mandarin speakers of L2 English injudging the grammaticality of their Subjacency violations. The results of the Grammaticality Judgement Test showthat the accuracy of Chinese speakers in judgement increased with English proficiency and that they rejectedresumptives inside islands as a repair. Contrary to the previous findings, this study provides evidence that UG isavailable in adult second language acquisition.

scholarly journals Second Language Acquisition of the English Dative Alternation by Native Speakers of Arabic

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Anwar S. Aljadani
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Semantic Properties

Abstract This paper reports on an experimental study that investigates the influence of the disparity between English and Arabic on second language acquisition, namely the phenomenon of the acquisition of the English dative alternation by Arab learners. The disallowance of certain Arabic verbs to occur in the double object dative structure causes difficulty for Arab learners to acquire English as far as the acquisition of the dative alternation is concerned. The experiment is devised to examine whether Arab learners are sensitive to syntactic and semantic properties associated with the English dative alternation. The experiment involved picture tasks with two structures: the prepositional dative structure and the double object dative structure. Overall, the results of the experiment show that the L2 learners failed to acquire the double object dative structure which does not exist in their L1. Based on these results, it is argued that L1 has an important effect on the acquisition of L2.

Acquiring Pronouns in a Second Language: Evidence for Hypothesis Testing

1984 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanette K. Gundel ◽  
Nancy Stenson ◽  
Elaine Tarone
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Hypothesis Testing ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
French Immersion ◽  
Direct Transfer ◽  
Language Pattern ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
L1 And L2

Gundel and Tarone (1981) studied the acquisition of pronouns by Chinese and Spanish speaking adults learning English. On the basis of this study it was proposed that when L1 and L2 differ in the relative order of object pronoun and verb, the acquisition of direct object pronouns proceeds in three stages: (1) direct transfer of the native language pattern; (2) zero anaphora, i.e. no overt form at all, in direct object position; (3) the correct L2 pattern. The present paper presents further evidence for this proposal, and hence for a hypothesis-testing view of second language acquisition, on the basis of longitudinal data from English speaking children learning French in the Toronto French Immersion Program.

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