Week 10a. L2 morphology v. functional projections

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GRS LX 700Language Acquisition andLinguistic
Theory

• Week 10a. L2 morphology v. functional projections

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Morphology

• In L1A, we observe that kids dont always provide
  all of the morphology that adults do.
• Traditionally, it was assumed that kids are
  learning the morphology and the syntax and that
  at some point they got it (say, when they provide
  correct morphology 90 of the time when it was
  required).

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Morphology

• A major recent development in the study of how
  kids come to know the (by now, known to be
  fabulously complicated, but yet relatively
  language-independent) system of syntax was in the
  observation that morphological errors are by no
  means random.
• In particular, in a large number of languages,
  what seems to happen is that kids produce
  nonfinite forms of the verbbut along with that
  comes the syntax associated with non-finiteness.

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German and L1A
CP
C?

• So, in German.
• When a 2-year-old uses a finite verb, it goes in
  second position when a 2-year-old uses a
  nonfinite verb it remains at the end of the
  sentence (after the object).

DP
IP
CI
ate
John
I?


VP
V?

DP
lunch
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Functional categories

• So, even though kids will sometimes use nonfinite
  verbs, they know the difference between finite
  and nonfinite verb and know how the grammar
  treats each kind. They are using T correctly.
  They just sometimes pick the wrong (nonfinite)
  one.
• Now, adult L2ers also drop a lot of morphology,
  will produce nonfinite forms
• This raises the question (in the general ballpark
  of how much is L2A like L1A?) as to whether
  second language learners show this effect as well.

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Functional categories

• Rephrasing a bit, what were talking about is
  essentially the structural complexity of the
  learners (L1A/L2A) knowledge (at a given point).
• It has been pretty well established by
  theoretical linguistics that adult native
  languages are quite complex, containing
  functional phrases like AgrP, TP and CP, and
  there is a lot of support for this idea that most
  if not all parametric differences stem from
  properties of the abstract functional morphemes
  (often reflected in surface morphology).

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Functional categories

• Verb movement (if it conforms to the rules of
  adult native-speaker verb movement, anyway)
  serves as evidence for this complex functional
  structure, since the verb moves into a functional
  head (T, for example).
• The evidence we just reviewed suggests very
  strongly that kids learning German and French
  produce sentences which comply with the rules of
  adult syntax (that make reference to this complex
  functional structure). Kids seem to know about
  the TP and the CP and the rules that pertain
  thereto.

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What is the relation between morphology and
functional structure?

• To the extent that we try to use morphological
  realization to diagnose functional structure, the
  answer to this question is important.
• Obviously, its not just about the surface form
• A deer always eats my bagel. Deer are funny.
• A goose always eats my bagel. Geese are funny.
• A wug always eats my bagel. Wugs are funny.
• I cut my bagel. I had cut my bagel. I will cut my
  bagel. On Tuesdays, I cut my bagel with a
  penknife.
• She went to class. She had gone to class. She
  will go to class. On Tuesdays, she goes to class
  sans bagel.
• She wrote a letter. She had written a letter. She
  will write a letter. On Tuesdays, she writes
  letters about bagels.

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What is the relation between morphology and
functional structure?

• So, there is at the very least an abstract level
  of morphology, perhaps related to the
  distinctions that the surface morphology can
  make.
• Point is regardless of the surface realization,
  plurals act plural, finite verbs act finite.
• This suggests a kind of separation between syntax
  and morphology.

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Rich agreement to syntax

• There is a longstanding observation, not really
  originating in the acquisition literature, that
  languages with rich agreement morphology tend to
  also be the languages that allow null subjects,
  move the verb to T.
• Various attempts have been made to try to make
  this an implicational relationship The agreement
  paradigm determines the features in the syntax
  (e.g., strong features forcing V to move T).
  (Vikner, Rohrbacher)
• This would make acquisition easierbut it also
  doesnt seem to really work. There are
  verb-raising languages without rich morphology,
  for one thing.

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Syntax to morphology

• A different view, perhaps a bit more widely
  adopted, is that the syntax makes available the
  features and structures upon which the morphology
  operates.
• We might even think of this as an abstract tree
  that is first built, and then pronounced in a
  second step.
• Distributed morphology (Halle Marantz 1993, see
  also Schütze Wexler 1996) works basically this
  waythe syntactic features determine the
  morphological shape, but as a second step, after
  syntax is done.

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Morphology and functional categories

• 3sg pres -s
• past -ed
• Ø
• masc 3sg nomplay3sgpres
• he plays.
• 2sg nomplay2sg past
• you played.
• You may remember this from a previous class. And
  the question is still relevant But is this
  knowledge built-in? Hint no.

• masc, 3sg, nom he
• masc, 3sg, gen his
• masc, 3sg him
• fem, 3sg, nom she
• fem, 3sg her
• 1sg, nom I
• 1sg, gen my
• 1sg me
• 2, gen your
• 2 you

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Morphology and functional categories

• 3sg pres -s
• past -ed
• Ø
• masc 3sg nomplay3sgpres
• he plays.
• 2sg nomplay2sg past
• you played.
• You may remember this from a previous class. And
  the question is still relevant But is this
  knowledge built-in? Hint no.

• An important part of how this system works is in
  the defaulting behavior
• If the more conditions for the more specific rule
  dont match the features available from the
  syntax, turn to the next less specific rule.
• This is a means of explaining the syncretism in
  paradigms multiple abstractly different forms
  sharing the same surface form
• I played. You played. She played.
• I play. You play. She plays.

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Morphology and functional categories

• 3sg pres -s
• past -ed
• Ø
• masc 3sg nomplay3sgpres
• he plays.
• 2sg nomplay2sg past
• you played.
• You may remember this from a previous class. And
  the question is still relevant But is this
  knowledge built-in? Hint no.

• The morphological paradigms differ across
  languages, as do their patterns of syncretism.
• This needs to be learned. The building blocks may
  be available courtesy of UG, but the patterns
  themselves have to come from the input.
• For L1ers, we dont see a lot of evidence for
  incomplete learning of this mapping, they
  generally have it down as soon as we can tell
  whether they do or not.
• Still, there are sometimes default forms (bare
  verbs) which weve attributed to a working
  morphology and a deficient syntax. (In targeted
  wayse.g., missing TP or AgrP or their features)

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Morphology and functional categories

• 3sg pres -s
• past -ed
• Ø
• masc 3sg nomplay3sgpres
• he plays.
• 2sg nomplay2sg past
• you played.
• You may remember this from a previous class. And
  the question is still relevant But is this
  knowledge built-in? Hint no.

• For L2ers, its just as necessary to learn these
  paradigms (morphological rules).
• What might happen if, in the heat of an argument,
  the morphological component fails to retrieve the
  more specific rule?
• He played the trombone last night.
• No! He never plays the trombone!
• play 3sg, pres
• 3sgpres -s
• past Ø
• Ø
• No! He never play the trombone!

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Functional categories

• The question were about to look at is whether
  adult second language learners also have the same
  complex structural knowledge (as native speakers
  and/or as demonstrated by L1ers) in their IL. Do
  L2ers know about TP in other words?
• Note that if L2ers can usually produce sentences
  which are grammatical in the TL but yet dont
  follow the rules which are associated with that
  structure (i.e. that only finite verbs move to
  T), we do not have evidence that their mental
  representation of these sentences includes the
  higher functional phrases like TP.

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The responsibilities of TP/AgrP

• Several studies have found that while inflection
  appears to be relatively poor, other things that
  Agr/TP are responsible for seem to be there.

in obligatory contexts 3sg Past Suppl. Be Overt subj. Nom V in VP
Haznedar 2001 46.5 25.5 89 99 99.9
Ionin Wexler 2002 22 42 80.5 98 100
Lardiere 1998a,b 4.5 34.5 90 98 100 100
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Prévost and White (1999, 2000)

• Prévost and White (1999, 2000) investigated the
  question of how other reflexes of finiteness
  correlate with overt morphology
• Essentially Can Poeppel Wexler (1993) style
  results be obtained by L2ers?
• Like kids do during L1A, second language learners
  will sometimes omit, and sometimes provide,
  inflection (tense, subject agreement) on the
  verb.
• Does lack of inflection correlate with the verb
  being treated as a non-finite form syntactically?

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Prévost and White

• Prévost and White try to differentiate two
  possibilities of what their data might show,
  given that second language learners sometimes use
  inflected verbs and sometimes dont.
• Impairment Hypothesis. The learners dont really
  (consistently) understand the inflection or how
  to use it. Their knowledge of inflection is
  impaired. Their trees dont contain the
  functional XPs.
• Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. The
  learners will sometimes pronounce finite verbs in
  their infinitive form (the verbs act finite, the
  functional XPs are there, but the learner
  couldnt find the right inflected form in his/her
  lexicon in time, so s/he used the nonfinite
  form). The nonfinite form is essentially a
  default.

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Prévost and White

• Possibility 1 (impairment) suggests basically no
  correlation between verb movement and inflection.
• Possibility 2 (mispronouncing a finite verb by
  using its nonfinite form) predicts that
• When the finite form is pronounced, the verb will
  definitely be (and act) finiteit will move.
• When the nonfinite form is pronounced, it might
  act finite or nonfinite.

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Prévost and White

• PW looked at spontaneous speech data from two
  adults learning L2 French (from Moroccan Arabic,
  after a year) and two adults learning L2 German
  (from Spanish and Portuguese, after 3 months).
  Monthly interviews followed for about 2 years.

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Prévost and White found

• Almost no finite (inflected) verb forms in
  non-finite contexts.
• That is It is not random.
• When verbs are marked with inflection, they
  systematically (overwhelmingly) appear before
  negation (i.e., they move).
• Many of nonfinite forms used in finite contexts
  (used finitely, moved).

Oblig. Fin Oblig. Fin Oblig. Nonfin Oblig. Nonfin
Fin -Fin -Fin Fin
A(F) 767 243 278 17
Z(F) 755 224 156 2
A(G) 389 45 76 7
Z(G) 434 85 98 6
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Prévost and White

• PWs data supports the hypotheses that
• (These) second language learners know the
  difference between finite and nonfinite verbs.
• They know that finite verbs move, and that
  nonfinite verbs do not move.
• The only real errors they make are essentially
  lexical retrieval errors (errors of
  pronunciation), pronouncing verbs which are
  abstractly finite in their infinitive form.
• One question Why the infinitive? Is it really an
  unmarked form universally? Does it depend on what
  the citation form is? Is it due to the
  language-particular morphology?

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L2A and L1A

• One thing this tells us is that, despite possible
  appearances to the contrary, second language
  learners interlanguages are quite systematic and
  complex, and the L2 learners have the same kind
  of abstract structural knowledge incorporated
  into their IL that we can argue for in the case
  of L1 learners.

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L2A and L1

• We dont know really to what extent UG played a
  role, based only on thisafter all, we know that
  the L1 had the full structural complexity of a
  natural language, including the distinction
  (perhaps abstract) between finite and nonfinite,
  and including (perhaps abstract) subject
  agreement, etc. Theres no reason that knowledge
  of the distinction between finite and nonfinite
  couldnt simply carry over (transfer) to the IL
  during L2A.

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Morphology ? syntax

• This suggests that morphology is rather distinct
  from syntax. It is possible to have the syntax
  right and the morphology wrong. And to some
  extent, morphology is not provided by UG, must be
  learned, and moreover must be retrieved.
• The view of Distributed Morphology under which
  morphology is a separate system given the task of
  pronouncing a syntactic structure (and which
  allows for the sort of defaults we seem to see)
  seems well suited to describe this.

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Morphology ? syntax

• Various other studies describe a similar
  dissociation obligatory subjects, subject case,
  and verb position are all governed by syntactic
  features/parameters attributed to functional
  projections. And while L2ers seem to get these
  right, they are inconsistent with the morphology.
  (See White ch. 6 Lardière, White, Schwartz,
  Prévost, )

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Schwartz (2002)

• In 2002 at the BUCLD, Bonnie Schwartz presented
  data of this sort looking at the gender agreement
  and definiteness properties of Dutch DPs, with
  the aim being to determine whether child L2
  acquisition was more like child L1 acquisition or
  more like adult L2 acquisition.
• What she found was that in terms of
  overgeneralizing morphology (overuse of
  uninflected adjectives), adult L2ers did it, but
  neither child L1ers nor child L2er did. But in
  terms of word order, both kinds of L2er went
  through a word order stage not attested in child
  L1ers development.

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Schwartz (2002)

• Schwartz concluded that
• child L2 is like child L1 wrt morphology
• child L2 is like adult L2 wrt syntax
• Again, a dissociation between morphology and
  syntax.
• Why? Morphology is surface-evident and frequent,
  why is there such difficulty?

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thoughts re Schwartz (2002)

• Jeff Lidz brought up the question of whether this
  might be due not so much to morphology, but to a
  phonological effect. Either in terms of an input
  filter (like the French discussion earlier) or in
  terms of a production constraint. Phonological
  problems could in many ways mimic morphological
  problems.

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thoughts re Schwartz (2002)

• Harald Clahsen brought up an interesting point
  with respect to processing there are processing
  results that indicate that adult L2ers need
  longer to process incoming data. While Im not
  sure exactly what studies he had in mind, taking
  that as given, perhaps the problem with
  morphology is that it just comes too fast. In
  the same kind of way that phonological filters
  might keep morphological marking out of the
  input data, processing constraints might also
  have this effect.

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