On the L2 acquisition of the morphosyntax of German nominals

Abstract

Our understanding of how adults acquire grammar has to date been mainly based on investigations of clause structure and the morphosyntax of verbs. The development of nominals, however, has so far not been investigated at the same level of detail. Against this background, the purpose of the present study is to provide an in-depth description of the L2 acquisition of nominals in German and to assess the results in regard to two general research issues: (i) di¤erences in the L1 and L2 development of inflectional morphology, and (ii) the role of transfer in L2 acquisition of grammar. We analyze data of untutored L2 German by speakers of Korean, Turkish, and Romance, concentrating on the realization vs. omission of D-elements, the marking of plurality, and the position of adjectives. While there are aspects of the data that evidence clear influence from the L1, we observe that, unlike in child L1 acquisition, nominal bound morphology poses a major acquisition problem for adult L2 acquirers independently of their L1. These results are reminiscent of what has been previously found for clause structure and the morphosyntax of verbs.

Definiteness in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian and some implications for the general structure of the nominal phrase

“…His results show that the class of D-elements (articles þ determiners) is productive from the beginning, that there are very few omissions of D-elements, and crucially, that the presence of a prenominal adjective does not affect the use of determiners negatively. His results support the finding of Parodi et al (1997) that the L1's DP layer can be transferred to the L2.…”

Morphologically complex words in L1 and L2 processing: Evidence from masked priming experiments in English

“…From the L2 literature, it is long known that inflectional morphology poses major acquisition problems for adult L2 learners (see Parodi, Schwartz and Clahsen (2004) for review). Two specific proposals have been made to account for these difficulties.…”

Sources of linguistic knowledge in the second language acquisition of English articles

“…Such errors appear to be particularly prevalent among L2-learners whose native languages (L1s) lack articles. Studies which have compared article choice among L2-learners with different L1s (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 1975a, 1975bThomas, 1989;Parodi et al, 1997;Murphy, 1997) generally agree that speakers of article-less L1s (e.g., Korean or Japanese) omit English articles in obligatory contexts to a greater extent than speakers whose L1s do have articles (e.g., Spanish). However, little is known concerning the effect of L1-transfer on the patterns of article (mis)use (but see Hawkins et al, 2006 for some recent findings).…”