The acquisition of V2 and subordinate clauses in early successive acquisition of German

How strong is the ban on non-finite verbs in V2? Evidence from early second language learners of German with and without SLI

“…Our eL2 TD results from elicited production are in line with spontaneous speech studies, which found strikingly few instances of substitutions and eninfinitives, and some overuse of bare forms in V2 (Prévost 2003;Rothweiler 2006;Thoma and Tracy 2006). However, the conclusions drawn from the spontaneous speech study on German eL2 SLI (Rothweiler et al 2012;Rothweiler et al this volume) are not supported by our eL2 SLI results.…”

“…Importantly, infinitives are almost never found in V2 (Clahsen and Penke 1992;Tracy 1991;Weissenborn 1990). The same pattern has been reported for early second language (eL2) TD acquisition (Prévost 2003;Rothweiler 2006; Thoma and Tracy 2006;Tracy and Thoma 2009). Verb forms without any inflectional marking have been observed in some eL2 TD children, and have been argued to be covertly finite (Prévost 2003).…”

“…This pattern suggests that young monolingual TD children are aware of the relation between verbal morphology and verb placement from early on. eL2 TD learners of German, with an age of onset of the L2 between 2 and 4, closely resemble their monolingual peers in the acquisition of verbal inflectional morphology and verb placement, as suggested by findings from spontaneous speech analyses (Prévost 2003;Rothweiler 2006;Thoma and Tracy 2006;Tracy and Thoma 2009). Target-like marking of finiteness and agreement and verb placement is mastered after about 6 to 18 months of exposure, preceded by a phase of producing infinitives in Vf side by side with target-like inflected verbs in V2 (Rothweiler 2006;Thoma and Tracy 2006).…”

“…Verb forms were coded as finite if they were inflected with -e, -st, or -t. The form -en was coded as finite when used in 1PL or 3PL contexts (cf. Prévost 2003;Rothweiler 2006), otherwise it was coded as non-finite. The form -Ø was coded as "?finite" in all contexts except for 1SG, where it was coded as finite, because the bare form, resulting from Schwadeletion, is accepted in this case (e.g., Ich komm 'I come-Ø').…”

“…Errors of substitution are rarely documented. eL2 TD learners of German also rarely produce en-infinitives in V2 (Prévost 2003;Rothweiler 2006), but at some point in acquisition they overuse bare forms in V2 (Chilla 2008;Prévost 2003;Rothweiler et al this volume;for English: Haznedar 1997;Haznedar and Schwartz 1997;for Dutch: Blom and Baayen 2012). In line with Haznedar and Schwartz (1997), Prévost (2003) adopts the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) for child acquisition and argues that these bare forms are covertly specified as [+finite] and Petra Schulz and Rabea Schwarze unspecified for person and number features.…”