Chapter 6
Non-Experimental Data: Functional Categories in the EFL Classroom
6.0 Introduction
In this short chapter I will present a few samples of non-target like sentences related to functional projections and will analyse them in the light of some of the hypothesis illustrated in the previous chapter. However, I would like to point out that the analysis I will attempt does not want to provide, at least at this stage, any ultimate hypothesis which may explain how L2ers master the functional domain in the target language. Its aim, instead, is to attempt an initial exploration - before discussing the experimental data I will present in the next chapters - of how Italian learners build up their representation of various functional domains in English: to be precise, the CP layer, the AgrP layer and the IP layer.
The sentences I have chosen have been produced by students at an elementary level according to the Oxford Quick Placement Test. The corpus from which they have been extracted consists of 18 compositions 180-200 word-long each written both in examination conditions and classroom activities during a course on writing-skills for Philosophy students at the University of Cassino in the year 2005-2006. The compositions range from argumentative, to descriptive, to narrative and expository text-types. Each of the sentence analysed is a sample of a specific error in one of the target functional projections mentioned above.
6.1 Data Analysis
Consider the following sentences:
39a.*What they study?
39b.*In Italy not exist the privatization process.
40a.*I’m a normal girl that live in a little town and dream her future. 40b *Life have no sense.
41a.*He always be able to help me with a laugh. 41b.*He always is cooperative.
As already pointed out, sentences (39-41) reveal problems in the acquisition of functional items in English as an L2. More specifically, CPs/IPs in (39a-b); AgrP in (40a-b) and the finite vs non finite contrast in (41a-b). According to the various
hypothesis explored in sections 5.2 to 5.4 of Chapter 5, each of them may be differently interpreted as giving evidence of lack of functional projections (e.g. Non-Availability Position: Meisel 1991, 1997; Beck 1998); of problems related to the morphology realising the latter in surface structures (e.g. Full-Availability Position: Epstein et al 1995; Haznedar 2003 a, 2003b; Lardiere 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2005; S&S 1994, 1996, 2000) or, finally, of underspecification of functional features (Partial-Availability Position: Eubank 1991, 1993/4, 1994; Hawkins 2001a, 2001b, 2005; V&YS 1994, 1996a, 1996b).
The position I hold here is that their ungrammaticality lies in overt morphology rather than in lack of functional categories per se. This, in accordance with the Missing Inflection Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse 1994; Gavruseva and Lardiere 1996; Grondin and White 1996; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Lardiere 1998, 2000; Prevost and White, 2000a, 2000b) illustrated in section 5.2.3, which provides the theoretical framework supporting the approach I will follow in my analysis.
Let’s start with sentences (39a-b). Both lack do-support in interrogative (39a) and negative forms (39b) and thus are supposed to reveal underspecification or even lack of Tense projections in the L2ers’ grammar. The former (39a), in particular, is a clear example of an intonational question, a very common phenomenon in SLA. According to the Partial-Availability Hypothesis, such an error would confirm the presence of a VP stage in the learner’s interlanguage, a stage at which inflectional projections have not been mastered, yet. My
contention, on the contrary, is that this is not the case, as I will try to show. My view, in fact, is that the problem in (39a) lies in the wrong value [± strong] the L2er has assigned to the abstract affix in T which carries φ- (number and person) and tense features. With lexical verbs such an affixal feature is weak - or, better, it has an affix with a weak V-feature (Radford 2004: 161) - and thus it does not trigger movement of verbs from V to T. The affix, instead, lowers to find a host onto which to check its features and be spelled out at PF. If, however, the abstract affix doesn’t find a lexical verb, it requires the presence of do-support (which lacks semantic content) as a host to check its features. To better clarify
what happens in the correct version of sentence (39) (e.g.What do they study?) let’s consider its underlying (simplified) structure in (42):
42.[CP Whati [C do +Tns+3rd pers. plur. [TP theyj [T Tns [VP they j [V study [NP whati ]]]]]]]]]]
Leaving aside the various movements of ‘they’ from spec-VP to spec-TP (due to the EPP feature in T) and of ‘what’ to spec-CP (due to the strong EPP and Wh-feature in C), let’s focus only on the Wh-features in T. As pointed out above, T carries a weak tense feature which does not attract the lexical verb from V. Yet, it needs a host for its affixal tense feature, otherwise the derivation, remaining unchecked, would crash. The point is that, to be affixed (by Affix-Hopping), the tense feature in T requires a complement VP headed by a lexical verb. In (39a) this does not happen because the tense feature in T is attracted to C, which is occupied by a null Q- particle (marking interrogative force) having a strong tense feature. The latter, together with the other features in it (e.g. number and person) moves to C. As a consequence, the abstract affix in T is deleted and for this reason can no longer lower to check the thematic verb in V. The Tense feature in C, instead, is still unvalued and needs to be checked. It can not, however, lower to the thematic verb, because it has a TP as a complement and not a VP (see above). Accordingly, the only operation allowed is Affix-Attachment, whereby the stem do of the dummy operator is attached to the affix in C (Radford 2004: 174).
Going back once again to our L2er who has produced sentence (39a). The problem there, I argue, does not lie within some kind of impairment connected to the functional category C, since movement of the wh-feature to spec-CP confirms that she has correctly mastered the features which trigger such a movement. Drawing from a proposal made by Radford (1996:57) according to whom, in the acquisition of the L1, children, due to input from adults tend not to distinguish auxiliaries like do in wh- questions and thus treat them as monosegmental forms (e.g. what’s she do = what does she do?), I hold that a similar behaviour is not implausible in L2 acquisition in a classroom setting, especially if we take into consideration the fact that contracted forms are explicitly introduced, taught and favoured in textbooks as a more ‘native-like’ form of expression, both in written
and oral production tasks. Thus, when items like these lack acoustic and even graphic evidence (Radford 1996:57) L2ers’ intake may take a form like the ones in (39a-b). That the L2er can receive such an intake, is also reinforced by a contrast between the L1 (Italian) and the L2 configuration (English): in the former, lexical verbs like study raise to check tense and inflection, while in the latter they don’t since tense and inflection are checked through insertion of the do-support.
Ungrammaticality, then, may be due only to a (morphological) mapping problem. The learner, in fact, has assigned the wrong value to the features in T. She has certainly grasped that T has and EPP feature, otherwise she wouldn’t have moved the subject, which originates in spec-VP, to the right of the Wh-expression in C and before the verb, thus showing to have acquired at least two projections: from spec-VP to T, and movement of the wh-word to spec-CP, thus building up a CSV (Complement-Subject-Verb) structure, which is a particularly salient
movement, both because it is UG driven and also because a Spec-Agr relation has been established between the wh-word and the Q feature in C. More so, the wrong assignment of the correct tense feature to T has triggered the Affix-Hopping operation in place of the Affix-Attachment one, probably reinforced by the ‘weak’ monosegmental clitic form of the do-support pointed out above, which in fact has neither been merged in T nor moved to C.
Apart from this, the L2er has neither mastered the full set of features in C (EPP, Q, Wh-) because if it is true, on the one hand, that she has correctly assigned an EPP and a Q feature to C, thus satisfying the right movement of the wh-word to spec-CP, on the other hand it is also true that she has valued as weak the tense feature in C and blocked the movement of T to C. These problems, again, may have been caused by lack of lexical knowledge, since it is possible that the L2er has acquired the strength of the tense feature in C, but has not given it the appropriate spell-out realization because of lack of acoustic salience from input. Further arguments in favour of the hypothesis that the L2er’s problem lies in overt morphology rather than in functional projections, is corroborated by studies carried out by Pienemann, Johnston and Brindley (1988) about developmental stages in the acquisition of question formation in English. More specifically,
structure (39a) roughly corresponds to Stage 3 in Pienemann et al’s taxonomy, the stage at which wh-words are fronted but no inversion takes place (*Where the Little Children are?).
An alternative hypothesis to explain such kinds of errors in question formation is advanced by Hawkins (2001:152-53), who suggests that, at Stage 3, the feature Q in C is realised as a free morpheme. This, in his view, may explain why it is not accompanied by movement from I to C. Since he argues that in native English movement from I to C is triggered by the awareness that Q is a strong bound morpheme, if L2ers at this stage realise that Q, instead, is a free morpheme, there is no compelling reason to trigger movement of verbs from I to C. It may also be the case, Hawkins continues, that due to a principle of economy and
representation which is at work during such developmental phases in L2 acquisition, the requirement that features like Q have to be realised by overt morphemes is instantiated. As a consequence, in cases of yes/no questions such a requirement would necessitate overt morphemes to appear in C, but since in questions with wh-words the latter appear in spec-CP, the head C can remain silent. Such a process, then, may offer an alternative explanation about the reason why in (39a) C has remained silent due to the absence of a do-support.
Yet, I argue, that in the sentence taken from Pienemann (*Where the Little Children are) that Hawkins uses to make his hypothesis, are is present in the surface form produced by the learner. The problem, there, is that it has not been properly moved to C. In the case of (39a), instead, the lexical verb is present but the do-support is not. While in Italian there is no difference between lexical and auxiliary verbs as regards movement in English such a difference is crucial, but the producer of (39a) does not seem to have grasped it. Hence, he/she has not mastered the value that the features in TP/CP have in English and thus has not been able to decide whether their nodes may be filled in with lexical verbs or with auxiliaries.
To sum up, it is plausible to posit that the L2er’s underlying representation of sentence (39a) is the one reproduced (in a simplified form) below in (43):
The L2er has acquired the syntactic role of functional T and the features it contains, but not the overt morpheme realising do-support, to which the tense features in T have to be attached. Neither does he seem to have grasped the fact that C has a strong tense feature that triggers the movement of T.
Turning now to sentence (39b), reproduced below as (44)
44.*In Italy not exist the privatization process.
It presents a problem similar to that highlighted in (39a). Also in this case the morpheme realising Affix-Attachment, which is responsible for checking features in T, is missing. In this case, the L2er seems to have transferred parameters from his native language (Italian) into the target language (English), without resetting them.
If we translated (44) into Italian, it would yield the acceptable sentence below:
45.In Italia non esiste il processo di privatizzazione.
In such a sentence, the subject has been inverted so as to appear in a postverbal position. In pro-drop languages like Italian subject-verb inversion, which is free from syntactic constraints, is associated with the possibility of omitting overt subject pronouns in surface structures. Since my primary concern in this dissertation is the acquisition of functional categories, I refer to a more detailed analysis of how such a sentence is licensed in both pro- and non pro- languages to specific works in the field (Burzio 1986; Belletti 1988, 1999; Safir 1985, Rizzi 1982). Here it just suffices to mention Rizzi’s standard analysis (1982), which holds that the null subject pro in Italian is licensed by an Inflection endowed with pronominal properties. The latter allows the expletive pro to get the Nominative Case with which it can properly govern the empty category appearing in subject position. Through coindexation, pro transmits Nominative Case to the postverbal DP which is within its domain:
In a non pro-drop language like English, instead, subject-verb inversion is not free, since it can only take place with unaccusative verbs (like exist in 44) and needs an overt expletive like there in preverbal position. Yet, also in the latter case unaccusative structures can be ungrammatical if the lower subject is definite, as in fact happens in sentence (44). Thus, a possible amended version of sentence (44) should appear in the form shown in (47):
47.?In Italy there doesn’t exist a privatization process.1
The constraints pointed out above are not fulfilled in (44), which lacks an overt expletive and has a definite DP as a postverbal subject.
Thus again, in sentence (44) I argue that problems lie in morphology rather than in the functional domain. As pointed out above, the L2er has simply transferred the underlying representation of the L1 to that of the L2, without resetting the values of the former. Yet, despite its ungrammaticality the sentence nonetheless reveals that projections fulfilling the requirement of English grammar have been realised. In fact, the lexical verb exist is placed after the negator not, thus occupying a non-finite position and, what is more important, has received no inflection. This means that syntactic operations have been successfully carried out in overt syntax and that the L2er has grasped the fact that in English negative sentences, lexical verbs do not raise to check for inflection, which instead are attached to the do-operator.2 If the L2er had not grasped this fact, he would have probably attached the 3rd person morpheme -s to the verb exist so as to yield *not exists.
Conversely, what has not been correctly carried out is the PF realization of such an operation. The lack of the appropriate morpheme do in T has, in a sense, blocked the right instantiation of the EPP feature in it and, as a result, the
1The question mark has been inserted to signal that such a sentence has aroused a few doubts in
some native speakers about its acceptability in a grammar judgement task.
2
One can also hypothesise that lack of inflection may be due to cliticization of the negative particle to the verb, as it happens in Italian (Belletti). But, one, wonders, in Italian the verb carries inflection as it does in the 3rd person English. Why, then, the L2er has only grasped the
cliticization phenomenon and not the inflectional one? Can the two be separated. More so, in the matrix clause, the L2er reveals having grasped the fact that English verbs have inflections as the presence of copular is shows.
expletive morpheme realising the subject in the surface form, which the EPP feature triggers, has been omitted.
On the other hand, studies on L1 acquisition point out that the presence of null-subjects in surface structure is closely connected to lack of inflection (Hyams 1996). Empirical evidence from classroom data, show that such a phenomenon also holds true for L2 acquisition.
As regards sentences (40a-b), they lack the inflectional morpheme marking subject-verb agreement. According to the Local Impairment Hypothesis, this fact is taken as evidence that the L2er’s interlanguage grammar has not mastered the difference between finite and non-finite verbs.
Within P&W’s Missing Inflection Hypothesis, instead, verbs lacking
inflectional morpheme as in the case of live and dream in (40a) and the VP don’t have in (40b) are interpreted as finite defaults rather than non-finite forms. This is also the position I hold in this chapter. I argue, in fact, that the verbs above have transmitted theta roles to their arguments by correctly projecting their respective DPs subject and have assigned the Nominative Case to them, an operation which infinitives are assumed not to carry out (Pollock 1989). What is more, in the case of (40b) the negative element appears on the right of the verb, a position which in English is occupied by finite auxiliaries and modals by default. The absence of the inflectional morpheme –s only reveals a problem related to the mapping of forms onto functions, rather that absence of functional categories per se.
Similar arguments may be used to clarify the ungrammaticality of sentence (41a). Here, copular be remains in situ and apparently behaves like a non-finite verb. This, again, may be taken as strong evidence that the functional category T is missing in the learner’s interlanguage at this stage. However, if we look closer at the sentence, we can notice that the subject-pronoun He has moved from spec-VP to spec-TP, thus showing that some form of functional projection affecting T has taken place due to the EPP feature in it. To add to this, the frequency adverb always is placed before copular be, a position it occupies when lexical verbs are inserted into derivations. This may mean that be is not used in the learner’s grammar as a non-finite verb but as a thematic finite one which has not received its [+strong] affixal tense feature and, as a consequence, has not moved to T to
check its φ-features (number and person). Also, it would not be implausible to hypothesise that the learner has treated be able as an unanalysed monomorphemic unit, in the same way as don’t is in the first stages of L2 acquisition, thus blocking raising of be as an independent constituent.3 As a matter of fact, literature on this topic reports that when copular be is used, even at the very early stages of
acquisition, its inflections are either used correctly or are not used at all (Cancan 1978; Shapiro 1976; Stauble 1984 among others). This, however, does not occur in (41a), thus providing prima facie counter-evidence to such assumptions. Yet, I hold that lack of inflection on be does not provide any counter-evidence just because it has not been interpreted as an auxiliary by the L2er, but as an
unanalysed monomorphemic unit, whereby the head be and the complement able have been embedded into a single lexical item (*beable) carrying only the internal features of the complement.
What is also worth observing in such a sentence is the fact that it closely resembles similar ones (e.g. 49) reported by Cancino (1978: 210-211), which marks stage 1 (out of 4) in the development of inflectional paradigms in interlanguage grammars:
48.*He always be able [to help me with a laugh]. 49 *I no can see
The only difference between (48) and (49) is that in the former the adverb is placed before the copula, while in the second the negator is placed before a modal. But modals and copulas occupy the same position in English syntactic
representations and negators and frequency adverbs are placed after them. Certainly, as a counterevidence to such an interpretation, one can also accept Hawkins’s proposal that in sentences such as those shown above copular be has received no inflection because it is treated as a non-finite verb. Yet, data in which learners mistake non-finite for finite tenses are very rare and, in any case, this does not clarify the fact that the learner that has produced it has clearly shown that he/she is able to project the subject to spec-TP. In any case, many more data are required to provide robust evidence for both hypotheses.
3
Finally, consider (41b), which presents a finite vs non finite contrast similar to that illustrated in (41a). Again, ungrammaticality here derives from
underspecification of features contained in English copular be. In this specific case, we can adopt Radford’s (2004) analysis of non thematic verbs and posit that copular be has a strong feature when [+fin] which triggers movement from V to T, while it has a weak feature when [+non-finite], which does not trigger movement and compels it to remain in situ. Thus in (41b), the learner has mapped the feature [+fin] in the lexical entry of copular is – which in fact has also been assigned the correct tense and φ-features - to a V node that, when occupied by non-finite be, has a [+non-finite] feature. However, in (41b) the learner has erroneously assigned a correct [+finite] feature to is but has placed it to a non-finite node which has blocked movement from V to T. This is in accordance with the hypothesis made by P&W, who claim that sometimes, in interlanguage grammars, features can be underspecified so as to cause a mismatch between finite features on verbs and non-finite features in functional nodes.
Now, what can we infer from the few data presented in (39-41), as far as the mechanisms that drive the learner’s representation of functional items in the L2 are concerned? If we apply to them Roberts and Roussou’s idea that language is conservative, I think that we can hypothesise with a certain degree of
reasonability that learners find it more difficult to reset parameters anew in the L2 than transfer into it those they have instantiated in their L1. In sentences (39-41), in fact, the learner has presumably chosen to transfer to the L2, parameters associated with values of verbs’ features of his/her L1.
In Italian, as already pointed out, both thematic and auxiliary/modal verbs have a strong tense feature which triggers movement from V to T. Hence, do-support is not needed since T is not void (verbs in fact raise) and thus it is not obliged to find a host to check its internal features (e.g. φ- and tense feature).
More specifically, the L2ers whose sentences have been analysed seem not to have mastered some features contained in the overt morphemes mapping onto functional categories. In particular, those related to the fact that::
1.in Italian interrogative sentences thematic verbs raise, while in English they don’t. In the latter, in fact, they have to undergo Affix-Attachment through do-support to be grammatical. This doesn’t happen in sentence (39a-b);
2.in Italian negative sentences, the negator precedes the lexical verb, while in English it follows the finite verb (e.g. the do-support) to be grammatical. This doesn’t happen in sentence (39b);
3.finally, in Italian thematic verbs usually precede frequency adverbs, while in English the former always follow the latter. However, when copular be is present frequency adverbs are placed after it. This doesn’t happen in sentence (41).
To sum up and conclude this section. Do ungrammatical sentences of the kind reported above, which show common phenomena in SLA written and oral productions, provide strong evidence that functional categories are absent when the specific morphemes that realise them are missing? I argue they don’t and what I have tried to point out above is that what may be lacking in learners’ representation of the L2 is either knowledge of the appropriate values of functional items or of the overt morphemes that realise them, or both, rather than functional items per se. Such an assumption raises important implications in terms of L2 acquisition: if, in fact, problems lie in the morphology that realizes functional categories, then we should also ask how the morphemes, both the bound and the free ones, which realise functional projections are learnt, stored and produced. As a matter of fact, since such morphemes contain, as I have tried to point out so far, both formal and semantic properties, as well as the abstract features underlying them, which are conveyed by bare input data, this implies that in the L2 they have to be learnt and stored up in the mental lexicon in the same way as substantive categories have to. And this may explain why problems are very often due to a learning deficit in the latter area rather than to one in the functional domain per se.
I will try to give more robust, statistical evidence about such a point in the next chapter, where I discuss data from a corpus of Italian L2ers at an elementary level of language proficiency.
Conclusions
I would like to conclude this chapter with a metaphor which, although it may appear simplistic, can help illustrate the points I have tackled in this chapter. Let’s imagine house-building: different countries have unique ways of building houses but whatever country we think of, we expect houses to have foundations, facades, floors, roofs and so on. Let’s consider these to be the “properties” of the house, not easily detectable from the outside. What matters, however, is that we know that various operations have been carried out to assemble all these elements in place, from the foundations up to the roof.
We also expect houses to have rooms in which to sleep, to eat, to rest, to wash, be they huts in the savannah, igloos in the North Pole or sky-scrapers in New York. What they differ in, is the way they have been organised in relation to the internal space allowed by the house: where the room for eating has been placed, where the one for cooking, for sleeping and so on. Also, these places may be located in smaller or greater spaces, or even within each other. Let’s call the different places the “features” of the houses, which may be more or less unique from country to county, and let’s call the process to build them the
“computation process”. The latter may assemble “objects” differently, but the process per se remains universal: the foundations first, the floor after it, the roof last.
Now, by applying all these elements to language acquisition, we can compare the foundations to “functional projections”, the existence of which we take for granted because we see the facades, the roofs, the floors that cover them. Let’s also compare the latter elements to “lexical items”, that is to say, the surface realizations of the underlying structure. Houses also have different internal properties because they are realised differently, in the same way as languages from the world are, or to extend the metaphor further, we can suppose that they do not have a separate room for cooking, or for sleeping (think of huts in the savannah). Despite this, there must necessarily be a place where to sleep; only it has a “null representation” in the same way as elements in language may not receive phonological realization. Of course, in the early phases of house building some foundations (e.g. functional projections) are not present and are built
gradually over time (e.g. “acquired”), as well as the rooms in them (e.g. “lexical items”). This, in my view, is what happens in First Language Acquisition. However, when we go abroad, even though we may perceive that houses are different from the ones we know in our country, we are not led to suppose that they have no foundations, no roofs, no place where to sleep and so on. This, I argue, is what happens in Second Language Acquisition. We already know what houses are made of: they have foundations (e.g. projections), and external elements (lexical items). Surely, we may not know what their internal structure and form are exactly, or what kind of foundations have been laid (e.g. their “underlying representation”), but we do know that all these elements are, in some way, present, because we are acquainted with their existence from observations of houses in our country (e.g. language).
In this work, then, I hold that functional categories are present from the early phases of second language acquisition, also in absence of surface morphemes and the lack of the latter is not connected with the absence of the former.
In the next two chapters I will put the assumptions underlying my metaphor to test by reporting results obtained in two experimental studies. In Chapter 7, I will analyse a corpus of 92 written Yes/No questions, while in Chapter 8 I will
examine a corpus of 46 imperative clauses. Sentences from both studies were extracted from guided compositions in letter form produced by young Italian L2ers of English as a Foreign Language at an elementary level of language proficiency. The learners belonged to seven different classes in various lower-secondary schools around Rome and the sentences they produced were elicited in obligatory contexts
