The Interaction of Instruction and Learner-Internal Factors In The Acquisition of L2 Morphosyntax

Abstract

This study considers the role of instruction, second language (L2) input, first language (L1) transfer, and Universal Grammar (UG) in the development of L2 morphosyntactic knowledge. Specifically, it investigates the acquisition of the Spanish morpheme se by English-speaking adult learners. Participants included 91 university students and 30 Spanish native-speaker controls. Learners received form-focused, communicative instruction on se for one week and were tested before, immediately following, and 24 days after the treatment period. Assessment consisted of a grammaticality judgment task and two production tasks using se in a variety of verb classes. The results showed that se had been added to many learners' grammars, but also that L1-derived forms and overgeneralization errors had not been completely preempted. These findings are taken as evidence that the development of L2 grammars is affected by a number of independent, yet cooperating, knowledge sources, which thus supports a modular account of L2 acquisition.

Subject inversion in non-native Spanish

“…This hypothesis was formalised by Oshita (2001) as the 'Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis' (UTH), and it is based on the presupposition that learners initially treat the subject as the external argument in all intransitive structures, therefore treating unaccusatives as unergatives. L2 speakers are reported to be able to recover from this initial misanalysis and fully acquire the target grammar (Zobl 1989;Sorace 1995;Hertel and Pérez-Leroux 1999;Toth 2000;Hirakawa 2003;Lee 2004;Montrul 2005). The reverse overgeneralisation pattern (i.e.…”

Morphology in transition: Plural inflection of Finnish nouns by Estonian and Russian learners

“…The growth of the empirical data and research regarding typologically different languages (e.g., Sulkala 1996) has made it increasingly clear that some supposedly nontransferable structures find their way into learners' production. Some resent research (e.g., Toth 2000;Montrul 2000;Miličevič 2000) has suggested, contradicting former opinions, that morphology is the module of grammar most affected by L1 transfer. The experimental studies, accomplished mainly in the theoretical framework of Markedness Differen-tial Hypothesis but also Full Transfer/Full Access-hypothesis (Novakovič 2004) are focused on free morphology and morphosyntax.…”

Se in the interlanguage of Portuguese speakers

“…Though the complete explanation of the Turkish clitic system is beyond the scope of this paper,* verbs such as aç-mak 'to open,' kapa-mak 'to close,' and kir-mak 'to break' function the same in terms of clitic markings for the causative/ decausative alternations as these verbs in Spanish, but as mentioned above, there is substantial difference depending on the lexical item. showed that LI English speakers are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to clitic acquisition; however, Toth (2000) demonstrates how focused instruction improves learners' use of se. Similarly, 'White (1991) illustrates that without negative evidence, L2 Spanish speakers have difficulty using se because of its complexity in Spanish.…”

“…Although other divisions of the use of se have been proposed (e.g. Toth, 2000), these seven categories are the basis of analysis for this paper.…”

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The struggle of LI English learners of Spanish with the clitic se has been documented Toth, 2000;Zyzik, 2006), but there have not been studies to document the use of the Spanish se by LI Portuguese speakers. Although Portuguese is structurally similar to Spanish in many ways, including the existence of se, this clitic has subtle usage differences in the two languages.

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