Syntactic creativity in second language English: wh-scope marking in Japanese-English interlanguage

Abstract

This article documents a fairly rare kind of interlanguage phenomenon, namely one in which interlanguages exhibit syntactic constructions that are grammatical neither in a learner's native language nor in his or her target language, but are nevertheless typologically attested. The target construction is wh-scope marking, a cross-linguistically attested form of complex question formation. Using an elicited production experiment, an off-line acceptability judgment task and an on-line acceptability judgment task, it is argued that wh-scope marking is a genuine phenomenon in Japanese-English interlanguages despite the fact that it is ungrammatical both in English and in Japanese. Given that the acquisition of wh-scope marking cannot be explained by these learners' first language nor by their target language, the current study investigates what other mechanism these learners might be drawing on in their acquisition process. The article proposes that whscope marking in Japanese-English interlanguages results from a simplification strategy that learners adopt in order to ease the processing burden.

A Bayesian approach to establishing coreference in second language discourse: Evidence from implicit causality and consequentiality verbs

“…The English proficiency of the L2 participants were determined by their scores on the Test for English Majors (TEM) Band 4, which classified them as advanced English learners 1 . In order to better understand the individual differences in their English proficiency, a C-test adopted from Schulz (2006) and composed of three short passages with 60 blanks was administered to L2 participants. The average C-test score was 35.05 out of 60 (SD = 6.46).…”

The processing of English which-questions in adult L2 learners: Effects of L1 transfer and proficiency

“…depending on whether the L1 licenses partial wh-movement or wh-copies (Lutz et al 2000). For instance, German-English learners show different production and comprehension patterns of long-distance wh-movement compared to Japanese-English adults (Schulz 2006(Schulz , 2011Slavkov 2015). Hence, grammatical options in whmovement afforded in the L1 appear to persevere into intermediate and advanced stages of adult L2 learning.…”

Overt and covert contrast in L2 phonology

“…Support for the ILH can also derive from showing that some set of L2 facts can be explained only by postulating some construct, such as a rule or constraint, that is not motivated for either the NL or TL. Such findings have been reported in various domains over the years, including word-final devoicing (Altenberg & Vago 1983), consonant clusters in onsets and codas (Carlisle 1998), resumptive pronouns in relative clauses (Hyltenstam 1984), verb-second patterns in main clauses (Schwartz & Sprouse 2000), and wh-scope marking (Schulz 2011), among others. In each case the researchers showed that the learner’s IL grammar differed systematically from both the NL and TL.…”