Chapter 5
The Debate on Accessibility vs Non Accessibility of Functional Categories in L2: from the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis to the Local Impairment Hypothesis.
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5.0. The Context of Interlanguage Studies on Functional Categories It is an undisputable fact that over the last fifteen years or so, the study of Functional Categories has attracted considerable attention in SLA. They have been identified, in fact, as one of the main loci of cross-linguistic variation and hence believed to mark a crucial step in the development of second language competence.
Yet, if on the one hand there is general agreement among researchers about the fact that the process that sets off their acquisition varies from learner to learner, on the other hand the explanations given to account for such a variation have been subject to great controversy. One thing, in fact, is to recognise, as Chomsky (1995: 169) does, that FCs are accessible to learners in some way through the PLD (Primary Linguistic Data) of the target language, another is to arrive at a principled theory which explains how their acquisition takes place. As a consequence, various hypotheses have been proposed and contrasting positions have emerged, each confirming, modifying or expanding on previous
assumptions.
Among the most debated points, the one which researchers have mainly focused on is the relationship which holds between abstract functional categories1 and the surface morphemes that realize them. A CP, for instance, may be realized either as the morphemes that/whether/if or as a null-morpheme, symbolised as ø and lacking phonetic spell-out; T may be realised as an auxiliary or as a null tense affix, and so on. In terms of learnability, the controversy about such an issue has given rise to two opposing stances in L1 studies: one, known as the Rich
Agreement Hypothesis (Rohrbacher 1994, 1999; Vikner, 1995, 1997), holds that morphology occurs before syntax and thus the acquisition of overt morphemes in surface structures triggers that of FCs. Within such a position finer grained
hypotheses have been made which distinguish whether morphology drives only the acquisition of functional categories or also of the features associated with them.
The second view, instead, known as the Separation Hypothesis (Beard 1987, 1995; Lardiere 2000), assumes that knowledge of morphology has to be distinguished from knowledge of abstract categories since the latter can also appear in absence of the former. This means that only if FCs are already present in the underlying syntax can the overt morphemes that realise them instantiate the mapping process of the latter onto the former.
Benefitting from the studies mentioned above, also in SLA various hypotheses about the acquisition of FCs have been tested and different positions have
emerged. The first point of contention relates to whether FCs are fully, partially or non- accessible in SLA and, if they are, to what extent. Supporters of the position which claims that they are available, maintain that L2 learners’ knowledge of FCs is evident from certain syntactic behaviours in the sentences they produce, as for example, verb raising, case-assignment, subject-verb agreement and so on, all phenomena that affect functional nodes (Epstein et al 1996; Grondin and White 1996; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Lardiere 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Prevost and White 2000). Also, researchers defending this position assume that absence of overt morphemes in speakers’ productions provides no evidence of some impairment in the acquisition of FCs but only of the morphology associated with them. This is because missing inflections are also found in end-state grammars (Lardiere 1998a; 1998b). Thus, it is argued that if the realization of correct
morphology is missing in surface forms, acquisition problems may be attributed to difficulty in mapping the former onto the appropriate abstract FCs.
Those who support the view that Functional Categories are partially accessible in SLA differ in the explanations they give about what causes impairment to full acquisition. Vainikka and Young-Sholten (1996), for example, hold that FCs are not initially projected in L2ers’ interlanguage, but only the lexical categories; Eubank (1993/94, 1996), instead, maintains that FCs per se are available but not the features they contain, while Hawkins and Chan (1997) and Hawkins (2001,
2005) attribute the unavailability of FCs to maturation constraints that prevent L2ers from achieving full control of them after a critical period.
To conclude with those who support that FCs are totally unavailable, they claim that Interlanguage grammars permanently lack the functional domain (Meisel 1991, 1997a, 1997b; Beck 1998) because UG principles are no longer working in SLA. Thus, impairment is due both to age factors and to maturation processes. Yet, despite such differences, there is agreement on the fact that there is a universal set of functional categories common to all languages and that variation resides in the features these categories contain. The latter trigger combinations through computational operations like Merge and Agree, that are differently interpreted at interface levels (e.g. LF and PF) from language to language. Thus, this being the picture, the crucial questions that have been extensively debated in SLA are:
1.Does the L2er simply transfer the categories that he/she has instantiated in his/her L1 to the L2? 2. Even if we accept that he/she can transfer them, can he/she also transfer the features they contain?
3.Does the L2er have access to functional categories also after the ‘maturational period’ is over?
As a matter of fact, if the L2 acquirer’s task were only that of transferring parameters from the L1 to the L2, then such a task would be relatively easy for him/her to carry out: he/she should recognise what functional categories are present in the target language from a universal set; assign the appropriate L2’s value to their features as they are provided by the input from the target language and, finally, map the new L2 features to the L1 categories. Unfortunately, the situation is much more complex than this, since there is neither a one-to-one mapping between functional features in the L1 and the L2, nor a one-to-one way of transferring them (provided, as hinted above, that they can be transferable at all, a possibility that some researchers reject as untenable). Certain features of the L1, in fact, may be realized in different ways from those which are in the L2 or, conversely, different realizations in the L1 may be mapped onto the same
functional category in the L2. More so, in the L2 functional categories may not even receive surface forms at PF, while they can in the L1; or this may occur the
other way round; that is to say, in the L1 FCs do not receive phonetic realizations, while they do in the L2. It is this variability that makes the acquisition of
functional categories in a second language a complex issue and justifies the wealth of hypotheses that have been proposed to explain how it works. In this chapter I present an extended survey of research work that has been conducted in this field of investigation since the mid 1990s. However, given the wide array of studies carried out, for the sake of clarity I will divide them into three broad categories which I have called, more or less arbitrarily, the Full Availability Position, the Partial Availability Position and the Non Availability Position. In the former group, I have included the studies that agree on the fact that Functional Categories are fully accessible in SLA; in the second, those which, though accepting their accessibility, claim that impairments of various sorts occur. Finally, in the latter group, I have included those positions holding that functional categories are totally inaccessible in SLA.
The chapter is organised in the following way. In section 5.1, I cursorily review a few early studies on the acquisition of FCs. In section 5.2, I explore all the positions belonging to what I have called the Full Availability Position, while in section 5.3 those belonging to what I have defined as the Partial Availability Position. Then, in section 5.4 I illustrate the hypotheses made by supporters of the Non Availability Position and, finally, in the conclusions I comment on a few points of contention raised in connection with the hypotheses introduced in the previous sections.
5.1.Early studies on FCs.
Within the generative framework, studies of FCs in SLA have mainly tested whether they are available in the L2 and the extent to which they are. Early data on this research area (Ard and Gass 1987, Olshtain 1987) confirm that, especially during the early phases of language development, learners tend to ignore or make little use of specific lexico-functional information so as to suggest lack of
competence in this domain. In the late 1980s, in a grammar judgement study conducted on L2ers of English, Ard and Gass (1987) questioned whether syntactic acquisition is, in reality, lexical acquisition. They found that L2ers
acquire language items as unique bits of information and that in their initial approach to the lexicon they have but a general idea both of the meaning of words and of the syntactic structures in which they appear. As proficiency increases, learners refine their knowledge and arrive at a fuller competence both of the meanings of words and of the features they contain (Ard and Gass 1987: 249). Olshtain’s study confirms such findings by maintaining that the acquisition of word formation rules in an L2 develops gradually (Olshtain 1987: 231).
More recently, SLA studies on functional categories have mushroomed and a wealth of phenomena linked to their acquisition, ranging from verb-raising, to wh-movement, to the appearance of agreement features, have been investigated. As pointed out above, within such a research context various opposing stances have emerged, maintaining that functional categories are fully, partially or non-accessible to L2ers. I will thoroughly examine them starting from what I have termed the Full Availability Position.
5.2 The Full Availability Position
In this section I group a series of studies claiming that functional categories are fully attainable by L2ers; what the latter may find difficult to handle is the morphology that realises them (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994; Gavruseva and Lardiere 1996; Grondin and White 1996; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Lardiere 1998, 2000; Prevost and White, 2000a, 2000b).
Accordingly, I give a detailed account of the theoretical framework inside which these studies have proliferated, together with results and conclusions from the experimental data they have analysed. I will start with Schwartz and
Sprouse’s Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis. 5.2.1.The Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis
Such a hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994, 1996, henceforth S&S) originates from the idea that the initial state of L2 acquisition corresponds to the final state of L1 acquisition (Full Transfer) (S&S 1996: 40). If failure to build up a representation of the second language from L2 input takes place, the learner starts a restructuring process from options belonging to UG (Full Access). The former aspect is what basically differentiates S&S’s position from the Minimal Trees
Hypothesis by Vainikka and Young-Sholten (henceforth V&YS) and the Weak Transfer Hypothesis by Eubank, illustrated in section 5.3. While the latter two positions argue in favour of the full access to functional projections by L2ers but not of their full transfer (functional categories per se in VYS’s, their features in Eubank’s), S&S’s hypothesis is in favour of both possibilities.
Obviously, by assuming that the initial state of acquisition of an L2
corresponds to the final state of an L1, S&S do not omit to highlight that the two processes start from very different grounds. The L2er, in fact, has to reset
parameters (choosing them from UG) that he/she has fully acquired in his/her L1, if these do no match with those of the L2. Thus, his/her learning process consists of a set of variables as in the initial state of the L1, plus input from the L2 and UG principles (S&S 1996: 41).
In a longitudinal study, S&S investigated into the changes of an adult Turkish speaker’s (Cevdet) German interlanguage over a period of 26 months. The data they collected consist of Cevdet’s spontaneous oral productions, that were tape-recorded at various intervals. In particular, S&S focused on three L2 German phenomena:
-1.the finite verb position, which varies from what it is in Turkish;
-2. the fronting of non-subject constituents (e.g an adverb in initial sentence position);
-3.the type of subject Cevdet used (e.g. either pronominal or non pronominal). The rationale behind such a selection was due to the fact that, even though both German and Turkish show OV word order patterns in embedded clauses (e.g. object-verb; non-finite verb-auxiliary verb), in German this order is partially made less transparent by what is known as the V2 phenomenon (e.g. the verb shifts in second position before the subject in matrix clauses). S&S noticed that Cevdet showed an unexpected development as regards the position of the finite verb which corresponds to three distinct stages:
-Stage 1: Cevdet’s initial German-Turkish interlanguage has the configuration SV[+F] (where [+F] stands for the feature marking finite tense) shown in (1) below:
1.Jetzt er hat Gesicht [das is falsches Wagen. ’Now he has face that is wrong car’ (Now he makes a face (that) is the wrong car)
(S&S 1996: 43)
The structure above is incompatible with the Turkish system, in which verbs do not raise past objects. What made Cevdet use, S&S ask, such a fronting and why does the subject always precede the finite verb? The answer they propose is that, being unable to yield a correct representation of German structures consisting of an optional sentence- initial component (e.g. X=adverbial) plus a finite verb V and an object O (e.g. (X)VSO), which as pointed out is not allowed by his L1,
Cevdet needs to restructure parameters within the constraints imposed by UG. Thus, he resorts to a “restricted” choice to build up embedded clauses in Turkish, in which a limited class of verbs permits full clausal complements (instead of the more common configuration in which embedded clauses are formed by a gerund preceding the verb), thus allowing him to subvert the canonical OV order. Since the head of this full clausal complement appears in C projection2, S&S conclude that what Cevdet does to overcome limitations from his native language is to use such a position as a landing site for V2 (e.g. verb movement to second position) in German. In short, Cevdet uses features licensed by his L1 made available by UG, especially in C projection and nominative case assignment; this, in accordance with the “full access” hypothesis they posit. Input from the L2, then, prompts him to raise the verb (which in Turkish is in a final position) from V to I to C and the Case Filter triggers movement of subject from Spec-VP to Spec-IP to Spec-CP as illustrated in the underlying structure below:
2.[SpecCP jetzt [SpecCP er [C’ [c hat [SpecIp er [I’ [I hat [VP [specVP er [v’ [ V hat [NP Gesicht
The extra spec-CP projection which appears in (2) is attributed by S&S to a carry-over from L1 Turkish, whereby the only way the subject can be assigned nominative case is through Spec-Head agreement relation (S&S 1996: 47). To
2 The Turkish sentence S&S use to exemplify their point is (with English translation in round and
functional projections in square brackets): [SpecCP Duydum (I-heard) [C’ [C ki (that) [IP sen (you-SG) [gel (come) [–ecek (FUT) [-sin (-2SG)]]]]]]. The underlying representation is mine.
sum up the pattern Cevdet has followed in building up his representation of German structures: firstly, he has used his Turkish L1 configuration to come to terms with German input. Secondly, he has resorted to a restricted choice in his first language in which a few verbs allow full clause complements to be merged in C projection. Thirdly, he has raised the German verb “hat” to this C position. Fourthly, he has moved the subject to Spec-CP position and assigned it the nominative case through the Spec-Head Agreement principle (Rizzi 1996). Finally, he has extended a further projection onto an extra Spec-CP position in order to account for the presence of the sentence-initial adverb “jetzt”. All these, it is worth pointing out, are UG-constrained movements.
-Stage 2: in addition to the pattern [(X)SV[+f]O] of Stage 1, at Stage 2 Cevdet also produces the pattern [(X)V[+f]S[+pron]]. This accounts for 32% of the total number of utterances which contain a pronominal subject, in comparison with the O % of the previous stage. This pattern is reported in (3) below, where [+pron] stands for pronominal subject:
3.dann trinken wir bis neu Uhr. ‘then drink we until nine o’clock (then we will drink until nine o’clock) (S&S 1996: 43)
In the structure above, S&S argue that pronominal subjects are incorporated into the verb from the Spec-Agr position, and have their nominative case assigned -At Stage 3, also non-pronominal subjects, according to the pattern [(X)V[+f]S], are allowed in post-verbal position (13% of the occurrences as compared with the 1% of stage 2) but they have their case assigned through a different mechanism from that pointed out at previous stages (Spec-Head Agreement at Stage 1 and Incorporation at Stage 2). In (4) below, for example, nominative case assignment takes place through a government relation, whereby the verb in C governs IP and its specifier. This means that subjects do not have to move to Spec-CP to be assigned nominative case.
4.Da hat eine andere Frau gesehen ’that has an other woman seen (Another woman saw that)
(S&S 1996: 43)
In conclusion, what comes out of such data? S&S claim that Cevdet’s language is different from German. The latter, in fact, is a strict V2 language, while
Cevdet’s interlanguage allows structures where the subject precedes the verb also in cases where sentence-initial constituents appear. This leads them to hypothesise fossilization problems since, in their view, there seems to be no possibility for Cevdet of de-learning the extra CP-adjunction which appeared at Stage 1 (even because negative data do not provide any help), which in fact survives also in the successive phases. The data illustrated above are taken as evidence by S&S to confirm that both the L1 (full transfer) and UG (full access) play a strong influence in the mechanisms which rule SLA.
5.2.2 The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis
Like S&S’s hypothesis, also the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Lardiere 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2005; Prevost and White 2000) 3 holds that functional projections are present from the early phases of L2 acquisition, since L2ers have unconscious knowledge both of them and of the features they contain. Starting from such a hypothesis, Prevost and White (2000) tested the use of finite tense in L2 French and German. Their initial prediction was that finite verbs appear in finite contexts, never in non-finite ones, while non-finite forms present more variability, since they are used as authentic non-finite verbs but sometimes they can play the role of finite verbs. From this, Prevost and White (henceforth P&W) assume that finite forms, occupying only finite contexts, never appear after prepositions or auxiliaries and modals since the latter are positions in which non-finite forms are placed (P&W 2000: 111). To give a few examples, the
ungrammatical sentences in (5-7) never occur in L2ers productions:
5.*Go does John to school? 6.*John go doesn’t to school.
3 The term is an amended version of Missing Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz
7.*John to go school.
This prediction contradicts the one held by Eubank (1996; see section 5.2), according to whom lack of knowledge of feature strength causes finite verbs to optionally raise or not raise and thus be used as bare infinitives. For example, the sentence below produced by an L2er (see details about the corpus from which it has been extracted in Chapter 6) can explain the two predictions:
8.*He always be able [to help me with a laugh]
According to Eubank, copular be does not raise due to lack of knowledge that it has a [+strong] value, which triggers movement beyond the adverb always. Thus, such a lack of knowledge of the correct feature value in be blocks the movement of the latter to T. Accordingly, it behaves as a non-finite verb remaining
uninflected in what appears to be a non-finite position. For Prevost and White, instead, be, even though uninflected and apparently in a non-finite position, is a finite verb which has received a non-finite form.
The two hypotheses also differ in the account they give of agreement features, since the MSIH assumes that all the mechanisms necessary for checking
operations are available to the L2er, while Eubank asserts that they are impaired. Thus, starting from such assumptions Prevost and White set off a longitudinal study to investigate into the spontaneous productions of four learners of L2 French and L2 German, who were interviewed at various time intervals. The data they collected consisted of at least two-constituent utterances in which they analysed finite verbs placement in both root and non-root contexts, matrix declaratives, embedded clauses and questions (P&W 2000: 113). Results showed that the incidence of finite verbs in non-finite contexts was very low. To add to this, they didn’t notice a random use of finite verbs in both finite and non-finite contexts, even in the early phases of data collection.
Successively, P&W tested the placement of finite verbs in negative phrases. In both French and German verbs raise over negation, while non-finite verbs don’t. Since the MSIH hypothesis holds that abstract functional categories and their features are implemented also in the early phases of L2 acquisition, if their
prediction is right, finite verbs should not be placed before negators, neither in French nor in German. The data White and Prevost analyse seem to confirm such a prediction, since the placement of verbs before the negator implies that
movement has taken place, as the examples below reveal:
9.mais on peut pas dormir ‘but one can 1/2/3/ SING. not sleep-INF’ 10.Ich spreche nicht Deutsch
‘I speak-1S not Germanì’.
(Prevost and White 2000: 117)
The next study P&W carried out focused on subject-verb agreement. In tune with the MSIH hypothesis, the starting prediction was that when agreement is found it is used correctly, since checking mechanisms are already in place. To investigate into it, they followed Poeppel and Wexler’s idea (1993) that accuracy of agreement is better checked by focusing on inflected forms first, and then see whether, if present, they are used correctly, rather than checking subject-verb agreement as suggested by Meisel (1997a). P&W found a high correlation between presence of inflections and their correct use (around 90% of
occurrences), which, they maintain, confirms their prediction. In short, to give an example from English as an L2, a sentence like (11) below is predicted not to take place in learners’ utterances:
11.I doesn’t go to school4.
In the light of their findings, P&W postulate that finite forms do not appear in non-finite contexts since they are not placed, with a few exceptions, in front of negators and prepositions or after auxiliaries and modals. This leads them to reject Eubank’s hypothesis pointing out that if it were true, as the latter predicts, that checking mechanisms are not instantiated in the L2er’s representation of the target language, then verbs could not systematically raise and be checked in appropriate syntactic positions as, on the contrary, their study confirms.
4 See note 21, p.77 chapter IV.
Yet, they also concede that L2ers present frequent problems in mapping morphemes to abstract FCs which appear in the form of missing inflections in surface forms. To explain such a phenomenon, they draw inferences from theoretical assumptions made within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle and Marantz 1993), which distinguishes between features in lexical items and features in syntactic nodes. It may happen, P&W propose, that features in the former items are underspecified in interlanguage grammars, while those in the latter items are fully acquired. In the cases in which all the features in lexical items are not grasped, competition arises and the item carrying the features which best match those of the syntactic node it should map onto, wins (Prevost and White 2000: 127).
Applying such an idea to their data, P&W suggest that both finite and non-finite verbs have, respectively, the feature [+fin] and [-fin]. In addition to this, the finite ones also have features marking [±past] tense and [φ-] specifications. Since in adult interlanguage grammars these features may be underspecified, a non-finite form can be erroneously attached to a finite node, thus causing ungrammatical sentences.
A position similar to Prevost and White is held by Epstein et al (1996). In a study they conducted to present counter-evidence to V&YS’s Minimal Trees Hypothesis (see section 5.4.2), which claims that acquisition of functional categories is partially impaired in L2, Epstein, Flynn and Martohardjono tested whether the latter were present in the productions of 33 young and 18 adult Japanese speakers of English as an L2. It has to be pointed out that the presence of functional categories in Japanese as an L1 is a point of great contention. Epstein et al report intuitions by Fukui (1988), who proposes that Japanese does not lack functional categories per se, but that neither of them has an inflectional system (Epstein et al: 2006: 45), and Miyagawa (1993) who claims, instead, that functional categories are present. In any case, such a characteristic of the learners’ L1 lent itself well to the hypothesis they wanted to check: if, in fact, Japanese speakers, whose L1 has no inflections, revealed acquisition of functional categories in the early stages, this would be considered counter-evidence to V&YS’s hypothesis that L2ers only have VPs projections at this stage.
The subjects, then, were asked to carry out a series of tasks focusing on the categories the presence of which the experimenters wanted to check: progressive tense, negation, do-support, wh-questions, present tense and others. So the former had to complete an elicited imitation task consisting of the repetition of stimulus sentences. The rationale behind the choice of such a task was that if a learner had a problem in certain syntactic (inflectional) structures, he/she would not be capable of reproducing the strings of words contained in the sentence correctly (Epstein et al 1996: 47). Also, before the test, the subjects were provided with word-lists both to check their knowledge of the lexical items that appeared in stimulus sentences and to avoid poor performance due to vocabulary problems which would falsify the experiment.
Results confirmed the intial prediction made by researchers, since 59% of children and 60% of the adults were able to correctly produce the sentences selected for the task, thus showing to have full control of the functional categories under investigation (Epstein et al 1996: 47). To add to this, the
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) carried out after the test to compare results from the two groups (young vs adult), showed that there was no great difference between them. This, Epstein et al take as evidence that the two groups build up the L2 grammar in a similar way.
As a generalisation, Epstein et al also maintain that absence of functional categories in L2ers’ productions does not mean lack of knowledge of the categories but, instead, such a phenomenon has to be attributed to problems with the lexical items that realise them. For, example, missing complementizers like that in surface forms may be due to production problems, whereby the L2er has not acquired the specific lexical item yet, even though the category is present in his/her underlying grammar (Epstein et al 1996: 19). This view is not very different from that held by Hyams (1994: 45) for L1 acquisition. Hyams, in fact, distinghishes between what she calls acquisition of complementation and acquisition of complementizers. The former is a semantic/syntactic phenomenon the latter a lexical one. Hence, it is possible to imagine a clause in which a child projects a CP complement only basing his/her knowledge on the semantics of the
verb without giving it, however, overt realization. Hyam explains the principle triggering such an operation in the following way:
In order for a constituent to be interpreted as propositional it must be syntactically realized as CP
Since, she adds, knowledge of complementation is separate from knowledge of complementizers, they develop differently and thus it may happen that a child express verb’s complementation without a matching complementizers. Also Lardiere (1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2005) makes a strong claim that morphological realizations are distinct from abstract underlying functional categories. This implies that unrealised specifications of morphemes in surface structures is no evidence of lack of functional categories. On the contrary, it is the appearance of the latter in the target language that informs the L2ers onto which functional category to project the morphemes (Lardiere 2000: 223). This is the reason why she speaks of “morphological competence”, that is, the learner’s ability to grasp which form “goes with” which feature (Lardiere 2005: 179). Obviously, such a competence is a complex one, consisting of information about phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantic and discourse-linked elements. How does the L2er know, Lardiere asks, if certain forms are
optional or obligatory, and what constitutes an obligatory context? In which domains are various features expressed, in combination with what other features, and why is supposedely the same feature expressed in some domains in some languages but not others? (Lardiere 2005: 179)
In short, acquisition problems lie in how features are assembled in the target language and how the L2er comes to terms with them. As an example, she illustrates how different languages select [±past] feature. In English such a feature, apart from expressing past events and states also encodes perfective aspects in eventive verbs (see chapter 4, pp.70-75) and irrealis mood in
conditionals, but it is not obligatory when the feature [+past] is used in contexts which express the “historical present”. In Somali, instead, the feature [past] is expressed on determiners and adjectives in nominal DPs, in which it indicates not only “past time agreement”, but also temporal habit, or whether the nominal
referent is visible or not visible to the speaker (Lardiere 2005: 179). Thus, the feature [past] has a bundle of features that are assembled differently from language to language, some of which may overlap while others may not, thus exposing the L2er to varying levels of difficulty.
To go back to the relationship between abstract functional categories and the morphology that realises them, Lardiere carried out a longitudinal study on an adult Chinese speaker of English (Patty) to investigate whether absence of agreement features on verbs could be due to lack of the category T in the representation of her interlanguage. If this were the case, her argument ran, then data should show a random use of non-nominative case on pronominal subjects, since the [+finite] feature value on T assigns nominative case to the subject it projects through its EPP feature. Observations of Patty’s oral production, instead, showed a perfect correlation between the appearance of past-tense marking on verbs and nominative case assignment, thus confirming that T was present in Patty’s grammar. Apart from nominative-case assignment, Lardiere also tested verb-raising in the light of three different hypotheses: 1. Eubank’s (see section 5.3.3) Weak Transfer Hypothesis, according to which if inflections in the L2 are not acquired, verb-raising should be optionally used in interlanguage grammars; 2. Beck’s Local Impairment Hypothesis (see section 5.4.1) according to which if the inflectional system is absent in surface structure, verb-raising should be optional, regardless of L2ers’ different levels of proficiency; and finally, Schwartz and Sprouse’s, Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (see section 5.2.1), which predicts that no optional verb-raising is found in L2 grammar, regardless of the level of proficiency, since such a phenomenon is not licensed by a
UG-constrained grammar (Lardiere 1998b: 356). Lardiere selected all contexts in which finite thematic verbs appeared, which she divided into two groups: those containing a negator (12a) and those containing clause-internal adverbs (12b):
12a: I do not write in Chinese. 12b.I hardly learn to speak Chinese. (Lardiere 1998b: 368)
After having collected and analysed data concerning both agreement features and verb-raising, Lardiere concluded that results are coherent with hypothesis 3, that is to say, Patty has grasped the relevant fact that English thematic verbs have a weak feature, despite absence of inflections on 3rd person singular verb (Lardiere 1998b: 369).
In another study, Lardiere (1998a) also asserts that morphological development and syntactic representation proceed at a different pace and it is the mapping task between the two processes that causes problems at the PF interface and results in missing inflections. But, she insists, this can by no means be taken as evidence that FCs are not present in interlanguage underlying grammars (Lardiere 1998a: 1).
Parodi, Schwartz and Clahsen (2004), in turn, investigated the morphology vs syntactic contrast related to the acquisition of inflectional properties of nominals in German as an L2, which they analysed in untutored production of L1 speakers of Turkish, Korean and Romance languages. The conclusion they arrived at, is that there are basic differences between L1 and L2 acquisition in the development of inflectional morphology. For example, data from L1 productions reveal that at an early stage of language development determiners are often omitted but noun plural affixes are acquired very early. In L2 acquisition, instead, plurality is often expressed through lexical, uninflected forms, and there is paucity of inflections on nominals which however increase over time. This, regardless of speakers’ L1 transfer, which seems to play no role in such a pattern of development (Parodi, Schwartz and Clahsen 2005: 696). Yet, they add, inflectional morphology does not transfer from the L1 to the L2 and transfer itself does not affect syntactic properties. Also in this case, then, problems lie in the field of morphology more than in syntax.
5.2.3. The Missing Inflection Hypothesis
The Missing Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Haznedar 2001, 2003a, 2003b) makes predictions similar to P&W’s MSIH, discussed above. In a longitudinal study conducted on a 4year-old-Turkish-speaking child, Erdem, learning English as an L2, Haznedar (2003a,) proposes that interlanguage
grammars contain extended functional nodes, also in presence of impoverished morphological inflections. Haznedar draws her conclusions from Lardiere (1998a, 1998b, 2000) and the Separation Hypothesis (Beard 1987, 1988, 1993), both of which maintain that L2ers’ problems with projections of functional categories depend on incorrect morphological mappings rather than on some kind of deficit in acquisition of FCs per se. Haznedar’s study consisted on the analysis of Erdem’s development in the acquisition of interrogative sentences (both yes/no questions and wh-questions) in English during an 18-month-long-period, during which 46 recordings of his oral speech were analysed.
Data show that Erdem went through gradual development marked at the beginning by yes/no questions formulated only through intonation. In addition to intonation, questions with copular be also start to appear in this early phase, even though at a very low rate compared with the former kind of questions. In the next phase, dummy do and various modals gradually appear in surface sentences. Erdem’s developmental stages are schematically summed up below (Haznedar 2003: 12-13):
13 It’s a ball? → Are you tired? → Do you know what I got?/Shall I read this?
What is also interesting is that Erdem uses verb-subject inversion only with be, do and modals; never with thematic verbs so as to produce sentences like (14), which in fact do not appear in the corpus:
14.*Go you home?
To sum up, Erdem showed that he had acquired the right yes/no question syntax very quickly, progressing from a bare intonation phase in the early stages of acquisition (from 45,5% of occurrences to 2,4%)) to successive phases in which he was able to correctly produce modals and auxiliaries (+inversion) in sentence-initial position (from 54,6% to 97,6/% of total occurrences).
Haznedar also tested V&YS’s hypothesis that L2ers lack functional categories in the early phases of learning. Thus, she analysed Erdem’s corpus to see if and
when CP clauses appear. As evidence of the presence of the latter, V&YS posit that learners should be able to produce wh-questions with a fronting wh-word (which occupies the spec-CP position); yes/no questions showing subject-verb inversion (with be/modals/do-support heading C positions) and embedded clauses with overt complementizers (e.g. that/whether/for).
Haznedar noticed that, also in this case, Erdem was able to produce complement clauses headed by wh-words at a time when he had not yet acquired the
appropriate lexical items realizing them: that/if/whether, as shown in (15):
15.No, I don’t know where I go.
In tune with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prevost and White 2003), Haznedar notices that absence of complementizers in surface forms is no evidence of lack of the functional category CP, given the English system which allows both null and overt complementizers:
16a.I think this boy is crying.
16b.I think that this boy is crying.
The presence in Erdem’s corpus of other forms of complementizers, of subject-verb inversion and embedded complement clauses reinforces Haznedar’s
hypothesis, whereby a sentence like (16a) above only signals lack of the optional lexical morpheme and not of CP projections. Thus, she concludes by asserting that V&YS’s hypothesis (see section 5.3.2) is untenable. To gather evidence against the Minimal Trees Hypothesis of the latter, Haznedar also analysed the appearance of CPs and IPs verbal morphology in Erdem’s utterances. If, her argument ran, CPs are present in the corpus from the early stages of acquisition, prior to mastery of inflectional projections, then this would allow to reject V&YS’s hypothesis of a developmental stage from VP to IP to CP in L2ers’syntactic representations. Haznedar’s data showed that while inflections in auxiliaries and modals appeared quite early, verbal inflectional morphology (e.g. third person –s, past –ed) took very long to take place and developed quite slowly. This, in contrast with early productive use of yes-no questions, wh-questions and presence of various forms of
complementizers (e.g. because, if, etc.), confirms that C projections are in place before verb morphology. Findings like these, Haznedar claims, while not supporting V&YS’s hypothesis supports the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis instead, in that the absence of inflectional morphology can not be attributed to lack of functional projections but only to their formal realizations (Haznedar 2003: 31).
5.3 The Partial Availability Position
Turning to the Partial Availability stance, in this section I illustrate those studies holding that L2ers’ access to functional categories is attainable only in an
attenuated or underspecified form. Inside this position the picture is made even more complex by the presence of more or less nuanced contrasts among various hypotheses. The Weak Transfer Hypothesis (Eubank 1993/94, 1996), for instance, claims that functional categories transfer from the L1 to the L2, but not the morphologically-driven features they contain. The Failed Functional Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Roussou 1991; Smith and Tsimpli 1995; Liceras et al 1997; Hawkins and Chan 1997; Hawkins 2001, 2005), instead, maintains that only functional categories that are instantiated in the L1 are attainable by the L2 learner, due to transfer from the first language. If, on the contrary, the learner’s L1 lacks functional categories that instead are present in the L2, the acquisition of the latter is impaired. Finally, a third position, known as the Minimal Trees Hypothesis (Vainikka and Young-Sholten 1996) assumes that functional categories are acquired gradually over time and the addition of a new functional category can only take place after a hierarchically subordinate one has been mastered first.
What links the hypotheses above, however, is the fact that they interpret cases of missing morpho-phonological realisations in surface structures, wrong agreement projections, lack of complementizers in subordinate clauses and of determiners in NPs as evidence of lack of functional categories in learners’ representation of the L2. For example, the sentences below, produced by Italian
L2ers of English at a pre-intermediate level, are taken as evidence to confirm impairment of the functional elements mentioned above:5
17a *About thing[s] to see, there are a large number of historical buildings. 17b *Recently, we was seeing on TV and on the press many debates .... 17c *A Journalist .... fall in love with her.
17d *While we was sitting in a restaurant. 17e *All that exist or can’t exist.
Sentences (17a-e), in which subject and verb agreement at various levels is missing, are taken as evidence of absence of related functional categories (AgrP and TP) and the features they contain: wrong values assigned to φ-features, lack or wrong use of Affix-Hopping, misuse of EPP feature blocking subject
movement to spec-TP and son on. To give and example from (17c); there, the verb fall is merged in the derivation in V but the internal features it carries [3rd per.], [sing], are not checked by the uninterpretable features [Uperson],[Using] associated with the abstract tense affix in T, which in English has a [+weak] V feature with lexical verbs. Hence, T has to lower to V through an operation called Affix-Hopping to check and delete the features in the latter. Since this doesn’t happen in (17c), agreement features can not be checked and the derivation crashes as shown (in a simplified form) in (18):
18 *[TP A journalist [T Tns 3rd pers. Sing. [VP [v fall in love]]]] XXX
In the light of such evidence, supporters of the various positions within the Partial Availability Position claim that mastery of functional categories can only be attained in an underspecified or attenuated way. Below, I introduce one of the hypothesis holding such a position: the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis.
5.3.1 Failed Functional Features Hypothesis
5 The sentences above, and those analysed in Chapter 6 belong to a corpus of written texts carried
out in 2005-2006 at the University of Cassino. More details about the texts and the corpus from which they were extracted is given on p.110.
In a study on the linguistic behaviour of a polyglot savant (Christopher) with a remarkable talent for learning and translating languages, Smith and Tsimpli (1991:149) hold that parameters are stored in a different module from UG principles. Drawing from Chomsky (1995), according to whom parameters are associated with functional categories, they argue that the latter belong to an independent component, which they call the Functional Module. In SLA,
however, such a module is not accessible to learners after a certain critical period and it is thus impossible for them to reset the parameters of those functional categories which differ from the ones they have instantiated in their L1. More precisely, if a learner's first language has certain values for certain functional categories these latter can not be re-parameterised according to the values of the L2 because of maturational constraints (Smith, Tsimpli and Ouhalla 1993: 279). Such an assumption is also used to confirm the undisputable fact that learners’ competence of the L2 never achieves the level attained by native speakers. From what has been pointed out above, it follows that, given the impossibility of resetting parameters, the L2er is left with a number of alternative options to choose from to come to terms with the representation of the second language he/she is exposed to. Smith, Tsimpli and Ouhalla (1993: 289-290) suggest the following:
1.He/she can resort to parameters already instantiated in his/her L1 and apply their values to the second language data. Such an option is thought to explain errors like the one below (shown in simplified form), made by an Italian L2er of English:
19.*He goes often to the cinema.
(John often goes to the cinema)
in which, as the underlying structure in (20) exemplifies, the verb goes is erroneously made to raise to T:
20 *[CP [C [TP He [T Tns [VP often [V goes [PP to [NP the cinema]]]]]]]
21.Giovanni va spesso al cinema6
[CP [C [TP Giovannij [T Tns +vai [VP Giovannij [V’ spesso [V vai [PP al cinema]]]]]]]
the ungrammaticality of (20) seems to be due to the assignment of an incorrect feature-value on the verb. As hinted above, in fact, in Italian, verbs have strong V features and can thus raise beyond the V position, where the adverb enters the derivation as an adjunct, and move to T to have their features checked.
Conversely, in English lexical verbs have a weak V feature and thus can’t raise beyond V’, but remain in situ to be checked by T through affix-lowering. Thus the learner producing the sentence above, not having fully acquired that English and Italian verbs have different strength values ([-strong] in English; [+strong] in Italian), has assigned to the English verb the value it has in Italian.
-2.As a second option the learner can use specific strategies and/or inferential processes drawing from the data he/she is exposed to. Such strategies, however, Smith, Tsimpli and Ouhalla (1993: 280) argue, affect morphological processes of surface structures and not correct deep representations of the second language syntax.
-3.A third option can allow the learner to implement strategies allowed directly by UG.
-4.Finally, as a fourth option learners can apply non-parameterised values of the L1 data to those of the L2. Evidence for such a strategy may result in surface structure errors like the one below, produced by another L2er of English:
22.*When we arrived from my friends they gave it [e.g. the cat] fresh water and some food.
Here, the L2 (Italian) learner has not grasped the subcategorisation properties of the English verb arrive, which in the context of sentence (22) (a narrative text in which the student reports how she found her pet on a road) may subcategorise both for the PP at and in when used to mean ‘direction towards a destination’. In
6Belletti (1990) explains the possibility for languages like Italian (but not French) of placing NPs
subjects on the left of the sentence-initial adverb as in “Giovanni spesso va al cinema”. She suggests, however, that in such a case the subject allows free focalization. See also chapter 4 for other proposals made by Belletti as regards the position of adverbs in English.
Italian, instead, it may subcategorise for the PP da to express a similar function and thus, though probably implying the same kind of movement, the learner producing (22) has made the wrong lexical choice.
Expanding on intuitions made by Smith and Tsimpli (1993), Hawkins and Chan (1997) conducted a study on the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) by Chinese learners of English as an L2 at various levels of proficiency in Hong Kong. They also used both French learners of English as a control group and a native English group to test the reliability of the questions they asked. The latter consisted of a GJT (Grammar Judgement Test) containing both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences on various aspects of RRCs (wh-subjects; objects; that-complementizer). Subjects were also asked to correct those elements in the sentences that they judged to be ungrammatical
After scoring the answers, Hawkins and Chan observed that in evaluating the correctness of the sentences containing CPs realised by various morphemes (e.g. wh-words and that), both the French and the Chinese group revealed a preference for overt morphemes (e.g. words, that) over null ones and a preference for wh-operators over that for subject RRCs (Hawkins and Chan 1997: 207).
All in all, the Chinese group performed worse than the French group, as confirmed by the two one-way ANOVA conducted first on the GJT scores ( F6.285 = 85.28, p<0.001) and then on correction scores (F6.285 = 85.52, p<0.001). However, the Chinese subjects improved their performance as acquisition progressed, thus confirming that they could grasp the surface morphology of predicative CPs in English.
The second task Hawkins and Chan investigated was the extent to which the Chinese group could learn the [CP … gap] structure (e.g. a null CP) in English in those contexts in which Chinese obligatorily fills similar structures with a
resumptive pronoun. The Chinese group performed worse than the French group, both in the judgement component (one-way ANOVA: F 6.285 = 101.51 p <0.001) and in the correction one (one-way ANOVA= F 6.285 = 85.71, p <0.001). Also in this case performance improved with acquisition. Yet, since in English the
structure [CP … gap] is the result of movement leaving behind a trace7, Hawkins and Chan wondered if such an improvement was due to wh-movement as English requires. If such a movement is acquired and if the Chinese L2ers are constrained by UG principles, then they would reject sentences violating the Subjacency principle as ungrammatical (Hawkins and Chan 1997: 209). To this purpose, they were administered a judgment task and scored according both to their ability to recognise the sentences which violated wh-movement and their ability to correct them in some way.
Results showed that in sentences like (23) below, which present Subjacency violations, nearly all of those who accepted it as incorrect, introduced a resumptive pronoun to amend it, as shown in (24):
23 *This is the man who Mary told me when she will visit
(from Hawkins and Chan 1997: 210)
24 ?The man who Mary told me when she will visit Him (Hawkins and Chan 1997: 214)
Again, the elementary Chinese group was significantly less accurate than the corresponding French one and the more advanced Chinese group was less accurate than the corresponding French group, both as regards the correction of sentences (One-way ANOVA: F6.285=39.39, p<0.001), and the grammar
judgement test (One-way ANOVA: F 6.285=29.71, p< 0.001). What is striking, however, is that more than half of the elementary Chinese subjects considered sentences violating Subjacency as incorrect and a third of them were able to amend them in some way. Despite this, Hawkins and Chan hold that the elementary Chinese speakers have not grasped the wh-operator movement. Rather, they suggest that the learners who corrected subjacency-violation-sentences did not do it because they realized ungrammaticality in them, but because they thought that they needed resumptive pronouns, which in Chinese are allowed. However, as proficiency increases, the ability to recognise wh-island violations improve and the tendency to insert overt resumptive pronouns declines.
7 When the morpheme realising the CP does not appear in surface forms it leaves a trace behind it
which has no phonetic realisation. For example, in the structure I think John is coming, the CP
that, which is optional, is present as an empty category (marked as e), but does not receive phonetic spell-out: I thing e John is coming.
Yet, Hawkins and Chan hypothesise again that this is not due to acquisition of wh-operator movement but simply to the insertion in the gap of the corrected sentence of a null resumptive pronoun pro, which Chinese permits (e.g. sentences corresponding to English *I like pro/her the girl are grammatical in Chinese). As an example (in a simplified form) to show how Chinese L2ers build their
representation of English, deriving it from their L1 syntax, Hawkins and Chan (1997: 217) suggest the configuration in (25) below:
25.The girli [CP {whoi e } [proi likes me]] is here.
In (25) the wh-word is created in situ and not as a movement from the embedded clause (e.g. after me) to the spec-CP position. The ensuing sentence, however, does not violate UG principles because the null subject pro is the trace left by the chain created by the antecedent NP the girl in the main clause, binding the relative who and the resumptive null pro which, as pointed out above, is grammatical in Chinese (e.g. it is a resumptive pronoun with a null spell-out). To conclude, Hawkins and Chan attributed differences in performance between Chinese and French to the fact that in Chinese wh-operators remain in situ while in French, as in English, they move to spec-CP. This explains why, in accordance with Smith and Tsimpli’s hypothesis, acquisition of FCs is attainable where parameters of different L1s coincide (as is the case with English vs French), while it is more problematic when they differ (as in the case of Chinese vs English). In fact, C(omplemetiser) in English has a set of features (e.g. [±declarative]; [ ±wh]; [±null]) that Chinese, instead, lacks (e.g. it has only the feature [±predicative]). The presence of a strong [wh-] feature in English, for example, triggers
movement of wh-words to spec-CP; conversely, the lack of such a feature in Chinese compels wh-words to remain in situ, at the end of the clause. To add to this, features in the two languages also have different morphophonological realizations according to how they are assembled. If, for example, CP features have the set of values [+predicative], [–wh], [-Agr] they are realised by the morpheme that. When, instead, they carry the set of values [–predicative], [+wh], [-Agr] they are realised by the null morpheme ø , which lacks a phonetic spell-out,
and so on. In the case of Chinese , CPs have neither Agr nor Wh features but only predicative ones. Thus, Hawkins and Chan point out (1997:199) that functional-lexical features consist of two parts; one purely functional and the other
morphophonological.
The analysis illustrated above, led Hawkins and Chan to make a series of assumptions to explain the representation Chinese speakers have of English as a foreign language. They argue that after a critical period, learners no longer have access to the full set of L2 FCs. They can map, however, the L2 overt
morphophonological features onto their L1 syntactic representation in the cases in which these coincide in the two languages. This, obviously, does not mean that they have developed a correct functional representation of the L2, but only of its morphophonological realization. Conversely, in the cases in which the L1 and the L2 syntactic representation differs, no correct functional category of the L2 can be accessed. Thus, to sum up, learners first map L2 morphophonological features onto L1 features specifications; that is, L1 functional categories realised by L2 morphemes. Then, as their exposure to the target language increases and their proficiency improves, they refine their knowledge of the L2 by departing from the L1 representation to gradually develop a finer and finer-grained knowledge of the L2. However, since a full functional representation of the L2 is impossible to attain due to maturation constraints, the grammar they will produce differs both from the L1 and the L2, though remaining within the domain of UG (Hawkins and Chan 1997: 217). In short, an L1 UG driven syntactic representation mapped onto an L2 morphophonological realization.
Hawkins has recently revised the initial hypothesis formulated in Hawkins and Chan (1997). The amended Failed Functional Hypothesis (Hawkins 2005) provides more finer grained solutions to phenomena studied under the previous perspective. For his analysis Hawkins draws from intuitions by Adger about features in lexical items, which he sees as triggering movement of wh-words in interrogative sentences. Hawkins’s new hypothesis is formulated in the following way:
Uninterpretable features not selected from the UG inventory of features during the critical period disappear. (Hawkins 2005: 128)
Movement is then triggered by values on features. Hawkins’s basic framework and predictions, however, have remained the same, since he assumes that if the L2er has not instantiated specific functional categories in his L1 before a certain age, there is no possibility for him/her of accessing them when he/she tackles the second language. Conversely, if he/she has instantiated them, then, their
acquisition is possible.
To test such a prediction, Hawkins observed Japanese L2ers of English, a language which, like the Chinese he investigated in the first formalization of the Failed Functional Hypothesis, places wh-words in sentence-final position from which they do not move. Following Adger, he claims that complementizers heading interrogative sentences establish an agreement relation between the [Q] feature they carry and a clause-constituent having an interpretable [Wh-] feature. Such an agreement operation, as devised by Adger (2003), works in the way illustrated below:
C[Q] D[wh-human] (=who)
D[wh, non-human] (=what) P[wh, location] (=where)
(Adger 2003, quoted in Hawkins 2005: 127)
Agreement is established by an uninterpretable [Uwh] feature carried by C, which triggers an agreement operation in order to check and delete it. Thus, the uninterpretable feature seeks a goal carrying an interpretable [wh] feature which, once found, deletes the uninterpretable [Uwh] feature in C:
C[Q, Uwh] ... D[wh] → C[Q, Uwh:wh] ... D[wh]
(quoted in Hawkins 2005: 128)
Adger assumes that the operation above is common to all languages. What differs, is the value assigned to the [Uwh] feature in C, that in English, being strong (marked with an asterisk, e.g. [Uwh*]), triggers the agreement operation, while in Japanese being weak it doesn’t. By observing the acquisition of wh-movement by Japanese speakers, Hawkins noticed that apparently they acquire
such a value on wh-features and, accordingly, are capable of moving wh-words in English in surface structures, even though their L1 does not allow such a
movement. Yet, despite the correction of surface forms, Hawkins suggests that the underlying representation Japanese speakers have of L2 English does not fit with the one of the native speakers, in the same way as that of the Chinese speakers in Hawkins and Chan (1997) didn’t. In fact, Japanese learners do not seem to be sensitive to certain constraints that apply to movement, such as superiority and subjacency effects. For example, consider sentences (26a-b) below (<where> and <what> are the two constituents to be moved):
26a.Where did John buy <where > what? 26b.*What did buy who <what>? (quoted in Hawkins 2005: 131)
In (26a), the superiority constraint blocks the movement of the wh-word what to the initial position, which is occupied by where, thus preventing it from being ungrammatical. In (26b), instead, this constraint is violated as well as the ‘shortest move principle’ (Hawkins 2005: 131) and the sentence results to be
ungrammatical. In Japanese this superiority effect is not present because there is no [Uwh*] feature matching a [wh] constituent in the sentence. This point is better illustrated by comparing the sentences below:
27a*What did John say [who ate <what>]?
27b Nani-o John-wa [dare-ga <nani-o> tabeta ka] itta no? (What-acc John-Top who-Nom <what-acc> ate C say Q?
(quoted from Hawkins 2005: 130)
As can be seen from (27b) above, Japanese allows movement of what to the initial position because the [Uwh*] feature, which in English blocks violations of superiority constraints in multi-wh-word questions, is not present.
Results, then, showed that the Japanese speakers Hawkins tested, despite their ability to grasp some features associated with wh-movement in C, were not sensitive to the constraint above. This, Hawkins concludes, is due to the fact that [Uwh*] feature which triggers such a movement through agreement is not
instantiated in Japanese and thus is no longer available to L2ers if they start learning a second language after the critical period has passed.
5.3.2 Minimal Trees Hypothesis
While Hawkins and Chan hypothesise that only functional projections instantiated in the L1 are accessible to L2 learners, V&YS (1996) hold, instead, that only lexical categories are present in the early stages of SLA, while
functional categories gradually develop over time. Their proposal, known as the Minimal Trees Hypothesis, suggest that in building functional projections L2 learners proceed through the following path:
VP→IP→CP.
They start, that is to say, by projecting just their native language VPs and then, through the interaction of input from second language data and X’-bar Theory, they develop higher projections (V&YS 1996:13).
Their hypothesis is the result of both a longitudinal and a cross-linguistic study in which they investigated German L2ers’ productions from various L1s (e.g. Turkish, Korean, Italian and Spanish). The data they collected consisted of tape-recorded oral interviews and a variety of oral translation tasks aimed at eliciting different kinds of sentences containing various agreement requirements. In analysing the data they had gathered, V&YS noticed that in the early stage of acquisition (which they call the VP stage), all L2ers, regardless of whether their L1s were head-final (like Korean and Turkish) or head-first (like Italian and Spanish), lacked the following projections:
-verb raising;
-auxiliaries and modals; -agreement paradigms; -complementizers; -wh-movement;
This impairment resulted in the production of ungrammatical German sentences like the ones quoted below:
26 *Du wo arbeitet? You were work? (Wo arbeitest du?)) 27.*Nein en matina nix essen No in morning [Ital.] not eat-INF (Nein, morgens esse ich nicht) 28.*Fur mei Junge immer vo mir schimpfe For my boy always from me scold-INF (Mein Junge schimpft immer mit mir) (V&YS 1996: 18-19)
As is evident from (26-28), all the sentences lack structures containing higher functional projections. Furthermore, at the VP stage, learners also fail to provide inflections of verbs but use, instead, an infinitive-like form without person and number agreement features (V&YS 1996: 17). Apart from the lack of IP/AgrP (Inflectional and Agreement Phrases), L2 learners of German at this stage show no evidence of having attained CP projections, since none of them produced embedded clauses with complementizers. Given the data above, V&YS conclude that learners start acquiring German as an L2 with a bare VP lexical projection according to the configuration tree in (29):
29 [VP [V’ [V [NP]]]]
Successively, L1 Italian and Spanish speakers pass to the configuration tree in (30), while the Korean and the Turkish ones, having the same initial head-final configuration as Germans have, maintain configuration (29):
30 [VP [V’ [NP [V]]]]
At the next stage of acquisition, L2ers learn to project onto an IP level, though in an underspecified way and provide syntactic nodes for verb-raising operations, for modals and for auxiliaries (V&YS 1996: 21). However, despite the appearance of this higher projection, agreement is still lacking because learners have not yet
mastered which φ- and tense features map onto which functional node. As a result, at this stage sentences show the following characteristics:
-optional verb raising; -some auxiliaries and modals -lack of agreement paradigms; -lack of complementizers; -lack of wh-movement.
The surface forms deriving from them are shown in sentences (31a-b):
31a.*Meher Deutsche lerne More German learn-!SG/INF (Ich lerne mehr Deutsch) 31b.*Ich sehen Schleier I see-INF veil
(Ich sehe den Schleier)
(V&YS 1996: 21):
After mastering the IP stage, learners start projecting a head-initial AgrP which presents the kind of features reported below:
-verb raising frequent;
-auxiliaries and modals common; -agreement paradigm acquired;
-some embedded clauses with complementizers -complex Wh-questions attested.
and surface sentences like (32a-b):
32a.Ah, was machst du? Ah, what do-2SG you? (Ah, what are you doing’) 33b.Was ist er denn?
What is he then (Was ist er denn?)
(V&YS 1996:23):
As regards CP projections, V&YS maintain that it is not clear whether L2ers acquire them, even though they think that an initial process of acquisition is triggered off, since instances of embedded clauses with complementizers appear
in the sentences they produce (V&YS 1996: 23). V&YS end their analysis by highlighting once more that L1ers’ lexical projections are the starting point for the acquisition of the L2.
5.3.3. Weak Transfer Hypothesis
The Weak Transfer Hypothesis (Eubank 1993/4; 1997) proposes that
specifications for the values on features depend on the presence in the learners’ lexicon of the appropriate paradigmatic affixes. Eubank observes that the bound ones are not transferred from L1 to L2 and, consequently, he assumes, neither are the values of the inflectional features belonging to them (Eubank 1993/94: 206). In his view, the acquisition of L2 features doesn’t depend on their strength or weakness but on the nature of the morphological paradigm which they belong to (e.g. see Rich Agreement Hypothesis, section 5.1 in this chapter). Until L2ers have mastered the appropriate affixes, the feature value [± strength] attached to AgrP remains inert; as a consequence, lacking a fixed value, it can shift alternatively from ‘strong’ to ‘weak’ so as to produce optional verb-raising. Only after the paradigm has been acquired are its feature strength established; [+strong] in the case of rich agreement, [+weak] in the case of poor agreement and thus
variability in the use of morphemes in surface forms disappears.
Eubank (1993/94) also attributes the late acquisition of the inflectional morpheme for the 3rd person singular in English L2ers to the fact that they
consider it ungrammatical. However, as proficiency increases and learners have a better command of the whole inflectional paradigm of English verbs, their use of such a morpheme is stabilized.
In short, Eubank suggests that functional categories are accessible to L2ers through universal properties of language, given their presence in the L1; the point is that they are underspecified and underused because children do not produce the necessary content material that should realise them (Eubank 1996: 91 ). Unlike V&YS, however, he suggests that not only lexical but also functional projections are available in the early stages of language acquisition; what is not accessible are their feature values [± strong]. Given that these projections are the trigger of
overt verb movement, lack of a fixed parameterization explains the fact that verb movement remains optional, at least until specific inflectional parameters are acquired. Despite this difference, however, Eubank agrees with V&YS on attributing evidence of acquisition of functional categories to the presence of overt morphemes in surface forms.
5.4. The Non Availability Position
All the positions illustrated so far, though differing in various ways about
whether functional categories, as well as the features they contain, can be acquired fully or partially, agree on the basic fact that L2ers have access to them. A
different position is held by other researchers who, on the contrary, maintain that access to functional categories is permanently impaired in SLA. More
specifically, in the case of the morpho-syntactic interface, acquisition of feature values [± strong] that determine verbs’ raising in adult L2 is made difficult due to maturation constraints. As a result interlanguage grammars show random uses of raising. Such a position is known as the Functional Impairment Hypothesis (Clahsen 1988; Meisel 1997a, Beck 1998).
5.4.1. Local Impairment Hypothesis
In a way similar to Lardiere (1998a; see section 5.2.2.2), Beck (1998), in a study aimed at testing verb raising, compared and contrasted predictions on this
phenomenon made by four different hypotheses: 1.Schwartz and Sprouse’s Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (see section 5.2.1); 2.Vainikka and Young Sholten’s Minimal Tree Hypothesis (see section 5.4.2); 3.Eubank’s Weak Transfer Hypothesis (see section 5.4.3) and 4.her Local Impairment Hypothesis (Beck 1998).
Beck’s Local Impairment Hypothesis also holds, like Schwartz and Sprouse (even though for different reasons), that raising is unconnected with overt morphology. The study investigated the occurrences of verb raising within the obligatory contexts in which they had to appear. Thus the main variable, that is to say verb raising, was tested against the same predictor variable (verb raising as
