AGENTIVE VERBS OF MANNER OF MOTION IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGES

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina Montrul
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Spanish Study

This article presents two experiments that examine the effects of the native language (L1) on the second language (L2) acquisition of argument structure. The linguistic focus is on agentive verbs of directed motion (march, walk) and change-of-state verbs (break, melt) in Spanish and English. Agentive verbs of directed motion undergo a transitivity alternation in English when there is a prepositional phrase (The captain marched the soldiers to the tents) but not in Spanish (*El capitán marchó a los soldados hasta el campamento). Two experiments are reported that examine whether Spanish and Turkish learners of English at the intermediate level undergeneralize the transitivity alternation with manner-of-motion verbs, and whether English learners of Spanish overgeneralize the alternation. In both experiments subjects performed a picture judgment task and a grammaticality judgment task. Results confirmed that the L1 constrains the acquisition of argument structure: There were overgeneralization errors with manner-of-motion verbs in the Spanish study and there were undergeneralization errors with these verbs in the English study. Learnability implications are discussed.

MOTION VERBS WITH GOAL PPs IN THE L2 ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH AND JAPANESE

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunji Inagaki
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Japanese Learners

In English, manner-of-motion verbs (walk, run) and directed motion verbs (go) can appear with a prepositional phrase that expresses a goal (goal PP) as in John walked (ran, went) to school. In contrast, Japanese allows only directed motion verbs to occur with a goal PP. Thus, English allows a wider range of motion verbs to occur with goal PPs than Japanese does. Learnability considerations, then, lead me to hypothesize that Japanese learners will learn manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs in English from positive evidence, whereas English learners will have difficulty learning that manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs are impossible in Japanese because nothing in the input will tell them so. Forty-two intermediate Japanese learners of English and 21 advanced English learners of Japanese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task with pictures. Results support this prediction and provide a new piece of evidence for the previous findings indicating that L1 influence persists when an argument structure in the L2 constitutes a subset of its counterpart in the L1.

Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Sea Hee Choi ◽  
Tania Ionin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Plural Marking

Abstract This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

Japanese learners’ acquisition of English manner-of-motion verbs with locational/directional PPs

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunji Inagaki
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
Japanese Speakers ◽  
Japanese Learners

This study investigated first language (L1) influence on second language (L2) argument structure in a situation where an L2 argument structure forms a superset of its L1 counterpart. In such a situation, a partial fit between the L1 and the L2 may trigger L1 transfer, whereas availability of positive evidence may allow the learner to arrive at the L2 grammar (White, 1991b). This study tested these predictions by investigating whether Japanese speakers can recognize the directional reading of English manner-of-motion verbs ( walk, swim) with locational/directional PPs ( under, behind), such as John swam under the bridge, where under the bridge can be either the goal of John’s swimming (directional) or the location of John’s swimming (locational). By contrast, their Japanese counterparts allow only a locational reading, as Japanese is more restricted than English in allowing only directed motion verbs ( go) to appear with a phrase expressing a goal. Thirty-five intermediate Japanese learners of English and 23 English speakers were tested using a picture-matching task. Results show that, unlike English speakers, Japanese speakers consistently failed to recognize a directional reading. I suggest that positive evidence need not only be available but also be frequent and clear in order to be used by L2 learners to broaden their interlanguage grammar.

scholarly journals Constructional tolerance

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florent Perek ◽  
Martin Hilpert
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Grammaticality Judgments ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Way

The present paper investigates the question whether different languages can be categorized into ‘constructionally tolerant’ languages, which grant speakers considerable freedom to combine syntactic constructions with lexical items in non-conventional ways, and ‘valency-driven’ languages, which impose stronger restrictions on the way in which constructions and lexical items can be combined. The idea of such a typological distinction is sketched for instance by Rostila (2014). In order to explore possible effects of constructional tolerance, a grammaticality judgment task is administered to speakers of English and French, which are two languages that differ with regard to this phenomenon: English verbs can be used across different argument structure constructions with relative ease, French verbs are more constrained. Both populations of speakers are exposed to stimuli sentences of varying creativity in a second language, namely German. The paper advances the constructional tolerance hypothesis, which states that speakers of a constructionally tolerant language should judge non-conventional examples in an L2 with more lenience than speakers of a valency-driven language. The experimental results are in line with this hypothesis, but they also suggest that grammaticality judgments are influenced by the availability of a productive L1 construction that shows functional overlap.

Verb movement in the L2 acquisition of English by adult native speakers of French

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 35-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalila Ayoun
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Production Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
School Students ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Performance Effects ◽  
Adverb Placement ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This study investigates the acquisition of English verb movement phenomena by two groups of adult French native speakers: a group of secondary school students and a group of university students. A group of English native speakers served as controls. Participants were administered a written questionnaire composed of a controlled production task, a grammaticality judgment task, and a preference/grammaticality judgment task, to test acquisition of the syntactic properties associated with the verb movement parameter (Pollock 1989, 1997). Instead of substantiating the anecdotal evidence that suggests that adverb placement errors persist into very advanced stages of English L2 acquisition, the present data support the successful acquisition of English adverb placement by French native speakers. It is argued that the advanced group has acquired the appropriate L2 parametric value as measured by the controlled production task; while results on the other two tasks are explained by performance effects.

Verb movement in French L2 acquisition

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalila Ayoun
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Production Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
Parameter Resetting

This study investigates the acquisition of verb movement phenomena in the interlanguage of English native speakers learning French as a second language. Participants (n=83), who were enrolled in three different classes, were given a grammaticality judgment task and a production task. The French native speakers' results (n=85) go against certain theoretical predictions for negation and adverb placement in nonfinite contexts, as well as for quantification at a distance. The production task results, but not the grammaticality judgment results, support the hypothesis that the effects of parameter resetting successfully appear in the interlanguage of adult L2 learners.

scholarly journals From a simple to a complex aspectual system: Feature reassembly in L2 acquisition of Chinese imperfective markers by English speakers

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832091143
Author(s):  
Yanyu Guo
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Feature Reassembly ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
English Speaking

This article reports on an empirical study on the acquisition of Chinese imperfective markers ( zai, - zheP and - zheR) by English-speaking learners at three proficiency levels. Compared to English, Chinese has a richer imperfective aspect in terms of markers (forms) and features (meanings). Results are presented from a grammaticality judgment task, a sentence–picture matching task and a sentence completeness judgment task. We find that advanced learners are successful in reassembling additional semantic features (e.g. the [+durative] feature of zai and the [+atelic] feature of -zheP) when the first language (L1) and second language (L2) functional categories to which the to-be-added features belong are the same. However, advanced learners have problems in differentiating between the interpretations of the progressive zai and the resultant-stative - zheR, and are not sensitive to the incompleteness effect of - zheP, which indicates that discarding L1-transferred features is arduous for learners. Our findings, in general, support the predictions of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). In addition, there is some evidence obtained for L1 influence, which persists at an advanced stage.

THE INTERACTION OF INSTRUCTION AND LEARNER-INTERNAL FACTORS IN THE ACQUISITION OF L2 MORPHOSYNTAX

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Toth
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
English Speaking

This study considers the role of instruction, second language (L2) input, first language (L1) transfer, and Universal Grammar (UG) in the development of L2 morphosyntactic knowledge. Specifically, it investigates the acquisition of the Spanish morpheme se by English-speaking adult learners. Participants included 91 university students and 30 Spanish native-speaker controls. Learners received form-focused, communicative instruction on se for one week and were tested before, immediately following, and 24 days after the treatment period. Assessment consisted of a grammaticality judgment task and two production tasks using se in a variety of verb classes. The results showed that se had been added to many learners' grammars, but also that L1-derived forms and overgeneralization errors had not been completely preempted. These findings are taken as evidence that the development of L2 grammars is affected by a number of independent, yet cooperating, knowledge sources, which thus supports a modular account of L2 acquisition.

First-language-constrained variability in the second-language acquisition of argument-structure-changing morphology with causative verbs

2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina Montrul
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
First Language ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Morphological Expression ◽  
Causative Verbs

This article presents three related experiments on the acquisition of two classes of causative verbs: physical change of state verbs with agentive subjects (e.g., English break) and psychological change of state verbs with experiencer objects (e.g., English frighten) in English, Spanish and Turkish as second languages by speakers whose native languages are English, Spanish, Turkish and Japanese. These verbs participate in the causative/inchoative alternation crosslinguistically, but the morphological expression of the alternation varies in the four languages. English has predominantly zero-morphology, Spanish has anticausative morphology, and Turkish and Japanese both have causative and anticausative morphology. Assuming the tenets of the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), results of a picture judgement task testing transitive and intransitive sentences and manipulating overt/non-overt morphology on the verbs show that morphological errors in the three languages are constrained by the morphological patterns of the learners’ first language (L1s). In addition to showing that formal features of morphemes transfer but morphophonological matrices do not, this study refines the role of L1 influence in the morphological domain by showing that the morphophonological shape of affixes transfers as well.

scholarly journals HOW EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE AFFECTS ONLINE L2 PROCESSING

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sible Andringa ◽  
Maja Curcic
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Types Of Instruction

Form-focused instruction studies generally report larger gains for explicit types of instruction over implicit types on measures of controlled production. Studies that used online processing measures—which do not readily allow for the application of explicit knowledge—however, suggest that this advantage occurs primarily when the target structure is similar in the first language (L1) and the second language (L2). This study investigated how explicit knowledge of a structure that does not exist in the L1 affects the initial stage of adult L2 acquisition. Fifty-one Dutch L1 speakers received a short auditory exposure (instruction) to a new language that included differential object marking (DOM), in which animate but not inanimate direct objects are preceded by a preposition. For 26 learners, the instruction was complemented by a brief rule explanation. Afterward, learners’ online processing and explicit knowledge of DOM were measured by means of eye-tracking (visual world paradigm) and oral grammaticality judgments. Results show that metalinguistic information promoted learners’ performance on the grammaticality judgment task. Although differences between the groups were also found on the eye-tracking measure, learners were not able to use DOM to predict the following object.

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