From Seeing Adverbs to Seeing Verbal Morphology

Abstract

Adult learners have persistent difficulty processing second language (L2) inflectional morphology. We investigate associative learning explanations that involve the blocking of later experienced cues by earlier learned ones in the first language (L1; i.e., transfer) and the L2 (i.e., proficiency). Sagarra (2008) and Ellis and Sagarra (2010b) found that, unlike Spanish monolinguals, intermediate English-Spanish learners rely more on salient adverbs than on less salient verb inflections, but it is not clear whether this preference is a result of a default or a L1-based strategy. To address this question, 120 English (poor morphology) and Romanian (rich morphology) learners of Spanish (rich morphology) and 98 English, Romanian, and Spanish monolinguals read sentences in L2 Spanish (or their L1 in the case of the monolinguals) containing adverb-verb and verb-adverb congruencies or incongruencies and chose one of four pictures after each sentence (i.e., two that competed for meaning and two for form). Eye-tracking data revealed significant effects for (a) sensitivity (all participants were sensitive to tense incongruencies), (b) cue location in the sentence (participants spent more time at their preferred cue, regardless of its position), (c) L1 experience (morphologically rich L1 learners and monolinguals looked longer at verbs than morphologically poor L1 learners and monolinguals), and (d) L2 experience (low-proficiency learners read more slowly and regressed longer than high-proficiency learners). We conclude that intermediate and advanced learners are sensitive to tense incongruencies and—like native speakers—tend to rely more heavily on verbs if their L1 is morphologically rich. These findings reinforce theories that support transfer effects such as the unified competition model and the associative learning model but do not contradict Clahsen and Felser’s (2006a) shallow structure hypothesis because the target structure was morphological agreement rather than syntactic agreement.

Second Language Users’ Restriction of Linguistic Generalization Errors: The Case of English Un– Prefixation Development

“…Robenalt and Goldberg (2016) investigated L2 English users' judgments about the atypical transitive use of intransitive verbs, finding that L2 English users showed no evidence of taking alternative preempting formulations (e.g., Ashley disappeared/vanished) into account when judging atypical transitive sentences (e.g., The magician disappeared/vanished the rabbit), while English native speakers tended to judge novel sentences with a readily available alternative formulation to be less acceptable than novel sentences with no competing alternatives. In contrast, Ellis and colleagues (Ellis & Sagarra, 2011;Sagarra & Ellis, 2013) observed that salient competing cues (e.g., temporal adverbs) block L2 acquisition of less salient ones (e.g., verb inflections), which in part supports the preemption hypothesis. Further, Ellis, O'Donnell, and Römer (2013) found that advanced L2 speakers' verb argument construction use is sensitive to the verb contingency in verb argument constructions, verb-token frequency (entrenchment), and semantic prototypicality.…”

L1 Explicit Instruction Can Improve L2 Online and Offline Performance

“…This has included presenting stimuli without temporal adverbs, thus forcing attention on the temporal meaning of verb inflections (e.g. Benati, 2005;Marsden, 2006;Marsden & Chen, 2011;Sagarra & Ellis, 2013), without overt subjects, thus forcing attention on person and number meanings (Marsden, 2006;Marsden et al 2013), or without lexical phrases for doubt and certainty, forcing attention on subjunctive versus indicative inflections (Fern ‡ndez, 2008). Task-essential form-meaning input mapping practice has been found to lead to more learning than input activities with equal numbers of Accepted for publication, Studies in Second Language Acquisition Kevin McManus (kmcmanus@psu.edu) 11 !…”

Salience in the noticing and production of L2 arabic forms

“…N. C. Ellis () attributed difficulties in noticing and acquiring inflectional morphology to what he called “learned attention” (also see Cintrón‐Valentín & N. C. Ellis, ; N. C. Ellis, ; N. C. Ellis & Sagarra, ; Sagarra & Ellis, ), an “associative learning” phenomenon whereby previously learned cues block those that are later encountered by the learners. In the current study, the future time frame was established in the model text through the multiple occurrences of the lexical item tomorrow, rendering the future tense marker redundant and unnecessary.…”

“…Of the participants in the current study, 81.25% were L1 speakers of English, a morphologically poor language (Behney et al, ) compared to Arabic. Sagarra and N. C. Ellis () reported that learners with morphologically rich L1s (e.g., Romanian and Spanish) spent a longer time looking at verbs than those with a morphologically poor L1 (English). N. C. Ellis and Sagarra () remarked that adult learners in the early stages of SLA generally tend to focus on lexical items because they are physically salient in the input and psychologically salient due to the simplicity of their form‐function mapping.…”

“…C. Ellis, 2018;N. C. Ellis & Sagarra, 2010;Sagarra & Ellis, 2013), an "associative learning" phenomenon whereby previously learned cues block those that are later encountered by the learners. In the current study, the future time frame was established in the model text through the multiple occurrences of the lexical item tomorrow, rendering the future tense marker redundant and unnecessary.…”