1,721,103 research outputs found
The Bottleneck Hypothesis in second language acquisition: A study of L1 Norwegian speakers's knowledge of syntax and morphology in L2 English
No full textThe Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008; 2013) aims to partially answer the question of why certain properties of language are harder or easier to acquire in a second language (L2). Based on a comparison of the different linguistic modules, the hypothesis holds that functional morphology is the bottleneck and consequently, the most challenging part of L2 acquisition. It is argued that the reason for this is, first, that differences between languages are located in functional morphology, i.e., what is known as the Borer–Chomsky Conjecture (Baker, 2008; Chomsky, 1995); secondly, that functional morphology bundles a variety of semantic, syntactic and morphophonological features which affect the acceptability and the meaning of the whole sentence. Feature Reassembly (Lardiere, 2009) and mismatches in feature realization are responsible for most of the acquisition challenges. The study presented in this article tests the predictions of the Bottleneck Hypothesis by investigating L1 Norwegian speakers’ knowledge of core syntax and functional morphology in L2 English. It is predicted that Norwegian learners make fewer errors with syntactic operations than with functional morphology, and that knowledge of core syntax improves faster than knowledge of functional morphology as the speakers become more advanced. We tested two constructions that do not match in English and Norwegian: subject–verb agreement, obligatory in the L2, and Verb-Second (V2) word order, obligatory in the L1. The former represents knowledge of functional morphology and the latter knowledge of syntax. This is the first experimental study designed to directly test the hypothesis. To anticipate our main finding, participants experienced more challenges with agreement than with verb movement, as they were had trouble identifying ungrammatical agreement. This lack of sensitivity was established not only at the lower proficiency levels, but also among the more advanced speakers. In addition, there was a stronger correlation between verb movement and proficiency scores than between agreement and proficiency scores. This fact suggests that learners develop considerably faster in their knowledge of English verb movement. We conclude that our findings lend support to the Bottleneck Hypothesis.<br/
The Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 acquisition: L1 Norwegian learners’ knowledge of syntax and morphology in L2 English
Full text linkThe Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008, 2013) proposes that acquiring properties of the functional morphology is the most challenging part of learning a second language. In the experiment presented here, the predictions of this hypothesis are tested in the L2 English of Norwegian native speakers. Two constructions are investigated that do not match in English and Norwegian: One involving functional morphology, Subject–Verb (SV) agreement, which is obligatory in the L2 but non-existent in the L1, and one involving syntax, Verb-Second (V2) word order, which is obligatory in the L1, but restricted to specific contexts in the L2. The results of an acceptability judgement task indicate that the participants struggled more with identifying ungrammatical SV agreement than ungrammatical word order. We conclude that the findings lend tentative support to the Bottleneck Hypothesis
Acquiring variation: A study of children’s and adults’ embedded clause word orders in Norwegian – distribution, development and effects
Full text linkSammendrag
Denne avhandlinga undersøker grammatisk variasjon i vaksenspråk og i førstespråkstileigning, altså barns tileigning av morsmålet sitt. Å lære meir om korleis tileigning av variasjon går føre seg kan gi viktige innsikter i korleis mekanismane i den menneskelege språkevna fungerer, og å lære meir om kor variasjon finst i vaksenspråk kan fortelje oss noko om kvifor variasjon finst.
Gjennom tre artiklar og ein kappeartikkel studerer denne avhandlinga ein spesielt eigna type grammatisk variasjon i norsk: Ordfølgd i leddsetningar. I leddsetningar med negasjon (`ikkje’), kan verbet stå etter negasjonen, som i (1), eller verbet kan stå før negasjonen, som i (2). I den første eksempelsetninga står subjektet han før negasjonen, men det kan også stå etter, som i (3).
(1) Han sa [at han ikkje hadde lyst på kake]
(2) Han sa [at han hadde ikkje lyst på kake]
(3) Han sa [at ikkje han hadde lyst på kake]
Studiane i denne avhandlinga utforskar kor, kvifor og korleis denne variasjonen opptrer i talespråket til morsmålsbrukarar av norsk, både vaksne og barn (3-7 år gamle). Ein detaljert gjennomgang av vaksne sin spontantale i korpus syner eit klart system der ordfølgda i (1), negasjon-verb, kan brukast i alle leddsetningar, medan bruken av dei andre variasjonane er avgrensa til spesifikke setningstypar og påverka av typen subjekt. Resultata peiker mot at dei spesielle rekkefølgjene verb-negasjon og negasjon-subjekt blir brukt for å formidle ny informasjon i ein samtale, mens negasjon-verb er ei nøytral rekkefølgje.
Innsamling av elisitert taleproduksjon hos over 30 trønderske barn (per studie) viser at desse barna bruker alle, og berre, dei tre moglege variasjonane allereie frå 3-årsalderen. Funna viser at språktileigningsmekanismen er ekstremt fininnstilt frå ein tidleg alder. Samstundes bruker barn variasjonen litt annleis enn vaksne: Dei to mest sjeldne ordfølgdene, i (2) og (3), er mykje hyppigare brukt. Med andre ord skjer ikkje førstespråkstileigning gjennom frekvensanalyse av ulike variasjonar, men er styrt av barns eigne, midlertidige, reglar for grammatikken til språket dei tileignar seg. I avhandlinga blir resultata analyserte samla per alderstrinn, men også gjennom både eit individ-perspektiv og eit utviklingsperspektiv, og eg foreslår at desse reglane er resultat mellom anna av at barn først har brukt meir tilgjengelege delar av grammatikken som grunnlag for sine språkspesifikke reglar, og at dei utviklar meir sofistikerte grammatiske analysar etterkvart.Summary
This dissertation investigates grammatical variation in adult language and in first language acquisition. Learning more about how acquisition of variation happens may provide important insights into the mechanisms of the human language faculty, and learning more about where variation exists in adult language can inform us on why it exists. Through three articles and a cover article, this dissertation studies a particularly suited type of grammatical variation in Norwegian: word order in embedded clauses. In embedded clauses with negation (`not’), the verb can follow negation, as in (1), or the verb can precede negation, as in (2). In the first example the subject, he, precedes negation, but it can also follow, as in (3).
(1) He said [that he not wanted cake]
(2) He said [that he wanted not cake]
(3) He said [that not he wanted cake]
The studies in this dissertation explore where, why and how this variation occurs in the spoken language of Norwegian native speakers, both adults and children (aged 3-7 years). A detailed examination of adults’ spontaneous speech in corpora show a clear system where the word order in (1), negation-verb, can be used in all embedded clauses, whereas the use of the other variations is limited to specific clause types and affected by the subject type. The results point towards the `special’ word orders verb-negation and negation-subject being used to introduce new information in a conversation, while negation-verb is a neutral order.
Elicited speech collected from over 30 children (per study) with the Trøndelag dialect shows that they use all, and only, the three possible variations already from age 3. The findings show that the language acquisition device is extremely fine-tuned from an early age. However, children use the variation slightly different than adults: The two most rare word orders, in (2) and (3), are much more frequently used. This points to first language acquisition not happening through frequency analyses of different variations, but being controlled by children’s temporary rules for the grammar of the language being acquired. In the dissertation, the results are analyzed age-wise, but also through both a perspective on individual variation and a developmental perspective. I suggest that these rules result from, amongst other factors, children having used more accessible parts of the grammar as the foundation for their language specific rules, and that they continue to develop more sophisticated grammatical analyses
The role of accentedness in acceptability judgements in L3 Norwegian: an across-domain investigation
No full textForeign-accented speech has been explored from various perspectives, yet the current study is one of the first to investigate the role of accentedness in relation to acceptability judgements in multilingual acquisition. We consider possible interactions of two domains, phonology and syntax, by presenting learners of L3 Norwegian with an Acceptability Judgement Task focusing on eight morphosyntactic properties. Stimuli were recorded with Polish, English and native Norwegian accents. The rationale of the study is based on activation competition; it is expected that a Polish or English accent may enhance activation of syntax of the relevant language and thus affect acceptability judgements. Test items were selected based on their grammatical similarities or dissimilarities between Norwegian and the two previously acquired languages, Polish and English. Prerecorded sentences were evaluated for grammaticality on a 7-point Likert scale. Participants included L1 Norwegian controls and L1 Polish–L2 English–L3/Ln learners of Norwegian divided into instructed and immersive groups. Results show significant effects of accent, group, and condition/grammaticality, as well as a significant group by condition/grammaticality interaction. Conditions not similar to Polish and English did not exhibit accent effects. Findings suggest that differences in ratings based on accentedness are linked to structural similarity and exposure conditions
Crosslinguistic influence in L3 acquisition across linguistic modules
Full text linkIn this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence (CLI) at developmental stages of third language (L3) acquisition of English by Russian–Norwegian children (N = 31). We tested seven linguistic properties within three linguistic modules (morphology, syntax and syntax-semantics). We compared the L3 learners to Norwegian (N = 90) and Russian (N = 74) second language (L2) learners of English. We predicted simultaneous facilitative and non-facilitative CLI in the L3 group within all modules, as the previously acquired languages offered conflicting options. Our predictions were partly supported. On one property, the L3 learners were different from both L2 groups, which is in line with cumulative CLI from both previously acquired languages. On four conditions, the L3 learners performed like the more accurate L2 group, indicating facilitative influence. On two conditions, all groups performed alike, showing high rates of accuracy. Taken together, the results indicate that CLI obtains on a property-by-property basis, with none of the L1s being the sole or primary source of CLI. Finally, we found CLI in all linguistic domains, but the developmental slopes for the properties were not equal, which suggests that factors such as complexity and saliency needs to be taken into account when we compare CLI.</p
The effect of media habits on English proficiency: A study of L1 Norwegian teenagers
Full text linkThis thesis compares the media habits of 86 Norwegian youth with their English proficiency. The goal is to investigate how much English we learn by e.g. watching TV, playing video games or listening to music. The 86 participants were between 16 and 20 years old, and answered a survey where they specified the number of hours they spent on an average day on each type of media. After this, they took an English proficiency test. The results from the test was then compared with the number of hours they spent on media in order to find a correlation.
The results show that there is a positive correlation between the English proficiency test score and communicating while playing video games. There is also a positive correlation between test score and reading English books. A few other smaller correlations were found, but these were mostly only for girls. There were 49 boys and only 37 girls included in the study, which might have caused the results for girls to be more unreliable.
No other clear correlations were found, and the main hypothesis was not confirmed. There are likely many factors unaccounted for which affected the results and gave unreliable data. One of these factors might be the age of the participant, because media habits could have a greater effect on English learning at younger ages. Also, comparing English proficiency with proficiency in other subjects must be done to discover correlations in case media habits bring down overall academic performance except in English.
Thus, for further research, I suggest studying younger children, while also including other subjects in school
Discovering gender and inflection. A view from Icelandic
Full text linkIn this dissertation, I investigate the nature of generalizations in grammatical gender and inflectional morphology from a learning perspective. Cross-linguistic differences in children’s learning trajectories have been at the forefront of research on the acquisition of grammatical gender. Transparency has been argued to be predictive of children’s behavior in gender acquisition (Slobin, 1977). Hitherto, however, it has been unclear what it means for a gender system to be either transparent or opaque to the child learner. I argue that in order to get to the root of the cause, a theory of grammatical gender acquisition must explain the conditions under which children generalize in gender assignment – and when these conditions are not met.
In a series of corpus studies that approximate a child’s lexical experience in gender acquisition in Icelandic, I formulate predictions for children’s behavior using two contrasting models of productivity, Baayen’s P and P* metrics (1989; 1991; 1993) and Yang’s Tolerance Principle (2005; 2016). These predictions were put to the test in an elicited production task on children and adults with two conditions: Productive and unproductive. I argue that the empirical results demonstrate that children and adults draw a categorical distinction between productive and unproductive processes in gender assignment in Icelandic. I argue that cross-linguistic differences in gender acquisition reflect a learning process that is guided by the search for productive patterns.
In two subsequent studies, using the same corpus-based and experimental methods, I investigate how knowledge of gender facilitates the induction of other inflectional forms or vice versa, using plural formation in Icelandic as a test case. Noun pluralization in Icelandic crosscuts both gender and inflection classes, which raises the question of how children can extract the relevant generalizations given syncretism both within and across the inflectional paradigm. I demonstrate how children and adults were at a loss to pluralize nouns that they were unable to assign gender to. In other words, productivity in gender assignment correlates with productivity in plural formation. Since knowledge of gender is contingent on the knowledge of productive nominative singular forms, I propose that gender may be a developmental prerequisite for the acquisition of plural formation in Icelandic due to the statistical primacy of singular forms in the input.
I discuss the theoretical implications of the empirical findings, both for language acquisition and for linguistic theory. I propose that an understanding of children’s discovery procedure in acquisition may offer solutions to otherwise intractable problems in linguistic theory. I further propose that learning considerations may shed light on the nature of the variation attested in heritage grammars. In a longitudinal corpus case study, I study how generalizations about gender assignment may undergo change as the result of attrition. I argue that the nature of the changes attested in the corpus as a function of time suggest difficulties with lexical access and retrieval, rather than a systematic re-analysis of the gender system, although the non-target forms are not entirely unconstrained
Syntactic representations in the bilingual mind: the role of executive function and pragmatics in cross-language priming
Full text linkIn this thesis I investigate how syntactic forms are represented and accessed in the mind of bilingual children. In particular, I explore the role of executive control and pragmatics in the selection and use of these representations. To do so, I tested a group of Norwegian-English bilingual children and a group of Norwegian age-matched monolinguals in a priming paradigm and in a cognitive task (the Dimensional Change Card Sort, hereafter DCCS). I investigated word order in possessive constructions and dative alternation. These forms were chosen because they allow for different word orders, which vary depending on semantic and discourse factors. That is, the different structures were elicited by means of a priming task (both within- and between-language) where children were first exposed to the alternating word orders (prime) and then had to describe a picture by selecting one the two possible options (target). My goals are two-fold: first, to show that priming within-language is stronger than priming between-language, arguably due to the involvement of an inhibitory mechanism; second, to demonstrate that the access to the abstract syntactic representation is mediated by semantic and pragmatic factors
Acquisition of L2 English articles among L1 Dagbani speakers: L1 Transfer or Fluctuation?
Full text linkThis study investigates the acquisition of L2 English articles among L1 Dagbani speakers. Both Dagbani and English are article languages. However, Dagbani lacks a morphological marker for indefiniteness, hence, indefiniteness and genericity are expressed in the language by bare nouns. L2 acquisition research shows that adult L2 learners both from article and article-less languages have much difficulties mastering accurate use of articles in English. It is assumed that L2ers from article languages transfer the article semantic of their L1s while those from article-less languages fluctuate between definiteness and specificity. Eight native English speakers and 45 L1 Dagbani speakers took part in this study. All participants took three tests: a written forced-choice elicitation test, an acceptability judgement test and English proficiency test. Data was analysed using R. The results showed that English article acquisition among L1 Dagbani speakers was influenced by their L1, L2 input cues and access to UG features. The featural composition of Dagbani articles based on expressions of definiteness and genericity were found to be the relevant factors in the L2ers article choice in English. These findings are consistent with the feature reassembly and the full transfer full access hypotheses. Finally, the study also found that Dagbani L2 English learners rely on explicit learning strategies in the acquisition of English articles
Morphological awareness skills of Norwegian adolescent dyslexics acquiring English as a second language
Full text linkThe aim of this study was twofold: (a) to investigate the morphological and phonological awareness skills of a group of Norwegian high school students with dyslexia, and (b) to examine the relationship of these two linguistic abilities to students’ reading comprehension skills. To this end, we compared the performance of a dyslexic sample to that of a chronological-age matched control group on three language and literacy tests: A morphological awareness test consisting of two subtests on derivational suffixes (the real-word and the pseudoword tests), a phonological awareness test based on phoneme and syllable deletion, and a reading comprehension test comprised of nine texts followed by multiple-choice questions. Results revealed that the dyslexia group in general did considerably worse than the control group on all the tasks administered in the study. However, results also indicated that, compared to controls, dyslexic participants exhibited a much larger within-group variation in terms of their accuracy on the tests. As for the relationships between reading comprehension performance and morphological awareness vs. phonological awareness skills, the present results suggested that reading comprehension skills were more closely related with morphological awareness than with phonological awareness in both the dyslexic and the control group
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