CLL lecture: Theoretical issues in SLA research

12 October 2004

Florencia Franceschina

Learnability

Q1: How is it possible for humans (but not animals or machines) to learn to understand and produce sentences of the language(s) they are exposed to?

Approaches to Q1

Interactionist/sociocultural modelse.g., Schumann’s (1978) Acculturation/Pidginization Hypothesis

Cognitive modelse.g., Bates and MacWhinney’s (1985, 1989) Competition Model

UG-based modelse.g., White (1989, 2003), Flynn et al. (1998), Schwartz (1998), Archibald (2000), Herschensson (2000), Balcom (2001), Hawkins (2001)

Evidence for UG in FLA

FLA is: Quick Effortless Uniform across stages of acquisition Robust in terms of noisy/variable input It shows equipotentiality across learners

Evidence for UG in FLA

Poverty of the Stimulus (PoS): our linguistic knowledge is underdetermined by the input

Example 1: Structure Dependence Principle

Example 2: OPC

Structure Dependence Principle

This is my cat Is this my cat?

Paws has drunk his milkHas Paws drunk his milk?

My cat is the best Cat my is the best?

Overt Pronoun Constraint

(1) John believes [that he is intelligent] English Japanese

(2) John believes [that _ is intelligent] English Japanese

Montalbetti (1984)

Kanno (1997)

Overt Pronoun Constraint

Japanese

(1) Johni believes [that hei/j is intelligent]

(2) Johni believes [that _i/j is intelligent]

(3) Everyonei believes [that theyj are intelligent] OPC

(4) Everyonei believes [that _i/j are intelligent]

UG, principles and parameters

“The aspects of I-language which are common to all of us are known as UG, and the theory of UG will state the commonalities that hold across all possible languages (often called principles of UG) and in what ways individual I-languages may diverge from these commonalities (known as parameters of variation of UG or just parameters).”

Adger (2003: 16)

Evidence for UG in SLA?

Target-like outcomes are the norm in FLA

Vs.

Non-target-like outcomes are typical in SLA

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 1: No access to UG

Clahsen and Muysken (1986)

Schachter (1988)

Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1990)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 2: Full access to UG

Flynn (1987)

Epstein, Flynn and Martohardjono (1996)

Scharwtz and Sprouse (1996)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 3: Partial access to UG

Smith and Tsimpli (1995)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

More recent proposals:

Account 2’: Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH, Prevost and White, 2001)

Account 3’: Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH, Hawkins and Chan, 1997)

A case study: Patty

Consider the case of Patty (Lardiere, 1998a, b)

1. Which of the two recent accounts is supported by the data?

2. What other information about Patty’s L2 knowledge would be useful to help us reach a definite conclusion?

The initial state

Account 1: Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA, Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994, 1996)

Account 2: Minimal Trees (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996)

Reading

Mitchell, R. and F. Myles 1998: Second language learning theories. London: Arnold.

Hawkins, R. 2001: Second language syntax. A generative introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. (Chapter 8)

White, L. 2003: Second language acquisition and Universal Grammar. (2nd edition) Cambridge: CUP. (Chapter 2)

From theory to data

Exercise