Languages with More Second Language Learners Tend to Lose Nominal Case

Abstract

In this paper, we provide quantitative evidence showing that languages spoken by many second language speakers tend to have relatively small nominal case systems or no nominal case at all. In our sample, all languages with more than 50% second language speakers had no nominal case. The negative association between the number of second language speakers and nominal case complexity generalizes to different language areas and families. As there are many studies attesting to the difficulty of acquiring morphological case in second language acquisition, this result supports the idea that languages adapt to the cognitive constraints of their speakers, as well as to the sociolinguistic niches of their speaking communities. We discuss our results with respect to sociolinguistic typology and the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis, as well as with respect to qualitative data from historical linguistics. All in all, multiple lines of evidence converge on the idea that morphosyntactic complexity is reduced by a high degree of language contact involving adult learners.

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

“…Bentz and Winter (2013, p. 18) argue that languages with more L2 speakers, i.e., languages that are used by many speakers who have learned them as a second language, show more case loss than languages with fewer L2 speakers. This fits with evidence that L2 acquisition of case is difficult even under the best of circumstances.…”

Cognitive processing, language typology, and variation

“…Cognitive research has long overlooked such variation, but current research suggests that because languages are acquired, learned and used in different social and cultural contexts, those contexts may bias language acquisition and use so much so that language structures are adapted to these biases, ending up reflected in typological distributions as well . Initial findings emphasize the role of social context (but see Ref for the role of cultural context) . In small communities people have a high degree of shared knowledge.…”

Adult Learning and Language Simplification

“…Ultimate attainment is also highly variable for older learners, dependent on age of acquisition, learning context, and learner motivation (Bley‐Vroman, ; Csizér & Dörnyei, ; Nettle, ; Selinker, ). Adult learners are thought to find certain linguistic features particularly challenging to acquire, including morphological complexity, syntagmatic and paradigmatic redundancy, and irregularities, even when similar features are found in their native language (Bentz & Winter, ; Clahsen et al., ; Lupyan & Dale, ; Trudgill, ; Wray & Grace, ). A number of studies provide empirical support.…”

“…Under these accounts, languages with greater degrees of adult learning are under increased pressure for simplification due to these acquisition difficulties, even if “[t]he evidence for such linguistic simplification has largely been descriptive, consisting of selected examples and grammatical inventories of small numbers of languages” (Lupyan & Dale, , p. 2). According to this hypothesis, the languages adapt to the needs and abilities of the older learners, with the more “difficult” features filtered out (Bentz & Winter, ; Lupyan & Dale, ; Wray & Grace, ). Many of these features may be informationally redundant anyway, in that the information which is no longer obligatorily encoded in the linguistic signal (e.g., situational/epistemic possibility, evidentiality, indefiniteness, distance contrasts in demonstratives, remoteness distinctions in the past tense) is retrievable from either linguistic or pragmatic context, and so such languages can comfortably tolerate these lower levels of complexity (Dahl, ; Gil, ; Lupyan & Dale, ).…”