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.

Agreement and null subjects in German L2 development: new evidence from reaction-time experiments

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Clahsen ◽  
Upyong Hong
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Korean Learners

In L1 acquisition research, developmental correlations between superfi cially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analysed in terms of clustering effects, resulting from the setting of a particular parameter of Universal Grammar (UG). In German L1 acquisition, there is evidence for a cluster ing of the acquisition of subject-verb agreement and the decrease of (incor rect) null subjects. The developmental connection between these two phenomena in L1 acquisition has been interpreted in terms of parameter setting. Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994) have claimed that the acqui sition of subject-verb agreement and non-pro-drop in adult L2 learners developmentally coincides in the same way as it does in child L1 learners. This is taken to indicate that UG parameters are fully accessible to adult L2 learners. In this article we will report on reaction-time (RT) experi ments investigating subject-verb agreement and null subjects in 33 Korean learners of German and a control group of 20 German native speakers. Our main finding is that the two phenomena do not covary in the Korean learners indicating that (contra Vainikka and Young-Scholten) properties of agreement and null subjects are acquired separately from one another, rather than through parameter resetting.

scholarly journals Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The History of French, Chez

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Longobardi
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Diachronic Changes

Current theories place very mild constraints on possible diachronic changes, something at odds with the trivial observation that actual, “language change” represents a tiny fraction of the variation made a priori available by Universal Grammar. Much recent work in diachronic syntax has actually been guided by the aim of describing changes (e.g., parameter resetting), rather than by concerns of genuine explanation. Here I suggest a radically different viewpoint (the Inertial, Theory of diachronic syntax), namely, that syntactic change not provably due to interference should not occur at all as a primitive-that is, unless forced by changes in the phonology, the semantics, or the lexicon, perhaps ultimately by interface or grammar-external pressures, in line with the minimalist enterprise in synchronic linguistics. I concentrate on a single case, the etymology of Modern French chez, showing howthe proposed approach attains a high degree of explanatory adequacy.

The optional subject phenomenon in young children's English: a case study

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ingham
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Child ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
English Child ◽  
Parameter Resetting

ABSTRACTRecent treatments of the optionality of sentence subjects in young-children's English have sought to link this phenomenon, and its eventual demise, to the development of the child's verb inflection system or to a parameter-resetting within the INFL (‘inflection’) constituent of the child's grammar. It is claimed that subject optionality disappears when these developments occur. The case-study reported here investigated the productive language of an English child between 2;5 and 3;0. It found that subjects were no longer optional at a stage when none of the reflexes of INFL claimed in the literature to be associated with the disappearance of subject optionality had yet been acquired. The possibility that subjects were present only when communicatively required was rejected. The frequency of subject realization of a Japanese child aged 3;0 was used to provide a measure of expected realization when subjects are not grammatically required. It is concluded that subject obligatoriness in English may be acquired as a characteristic of the language sui generis, independently of developments elsewhere in the child's emerging grammar.

Late Medieval and beyond: the renewal of NEG1

2018 ◽  
pp. 145-172
Author(s):  
Katerina Chatzopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Late Medieval ◽  
Exact Location ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
Syntactic Status ◽  
Free Variation

This chapter discusses negator distribution in Late Medieval Greek with texts from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Spoken Greek of this period depicts a stage of variation in the forms of NEG1 and NEG2. Both elements have developed counterparts with which they appear in free variation, as the former NEG1-thing, οὐδέν‎ /udhén/, and NEG2-thing, μηδέν‎ /midhén/, indefinites have bleached into plain sentential negators. Two instances of parameter resetting in Late Medieval Greek are identified: (i) the specifier-to-head shift in the syntactic status of the negators and (ii) the loss of NEG2 from the conditional protasis. The NEG2 was lost from the conditional antecedent for reasons that relate to its syntactic status shift and exact location on the expanded CP.

Clitic placement in L2 French: evidence from sentence matching

2002 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
NIGEL DUFFIELD ◽  
LYDIA WHITE ◽  
JOYCE BRUHN DE GARAVITO ◽  
SILVINA MONTRUL ◽  
PHILIPPE PRÉVOST
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
Sentence Matching ◽  
Feature Values ◽  
Clitic Placement

In this paper, we argue in favour of the NO IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, whereby L2 functional categories, features and feature values are attainable, and against the NO PARAMETER RESETTING HYPOTHESIS, according to which L2 learners are restricted to L1 categories and features, as well as against the LOCAL IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, which claims that the interlanguage grammar is characterized by inert feature values. An online experiment was conducted, investigating adult learners' knowledge of properties relating to clitic projections. Advanced learners of French (L1s English and Spanish), together with a native speaker control group, were tested on a variety of constructions involving clitics by means of the SENTENCE MATCHING procedure (Freedman & Forster 1985). L2 learners distinguished in their response times between certain kinds of grammatical and ungrammatical clitic placement, as did the native-speaker controls, suggesting the attainability of L2 properties distinct from the L1.

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