Showing papers on "Interface hypothesis published in 2016"

Selectivity in L1 Attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish Near-Native Speakers of English

Abstract: Previous research has shown L1 attrition to be restricted to structures at the interfaces between syntax and pragmatics, but not to occur with syntactic properties that do not involve such interfaces (‘Interface Hypothesis’, Sorace and Filiaci in Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Lang Res 22: 339–368, 2006). The present study tested possible L1 attrition effects on a syntax-semantics interface structure [Differential Object Marking (DOM) using the Spanish personal preposition] as well as the effects of recent L1 re-exposure on the potential attrition of these structures, using offline and eye-tracking measures. Participants included a group of native Spanish speakers experiencing attrition (‘attriters’), a second group of attriters exposed exclusively to Spanish before they were tested, and a control group of Spanish monolinguals. The eye-tracking results showed very early sensitivity to DOM violations, which was of an equal magnitude across all groups. The off-line results also showed an equal sensitivity across groups. These results reveal that structures involving ‘internal’ interfaces like the DOM do not undergo attrition either at the processing or representational level.

Cross-linguistic influence at the discourse–syntax interface: Insights from anaphora resolution in child second language learners of Italian

Abstract: This paper reports the results of an experimental study on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora in Italian by two groups of 13–14-year-olds: monolingual native Italian speakers and highly proficient child second language (L2) learners of Italian whose native language is Croatian. In a picture selection task the participants were asked to identify antecedents of null and overt subject pronouns in ambiguous forward and backward anaphora sentences. Our assumption in the paper was that Italian and Croatian do not differ with respect to the antecedent biases of null and overt subject pronouns in the contexts under investigation. As predicted, the L2 learners expressed pragmatically appropriate antecedent preferences in all conditions. They even selected the pragmatically inappropriate subject antecedent for the overt pronoun less often than the native speakers, especially in backward anaphora. The L2 learners’ antecedent preferences closely mirror those established in previous research for their age-mat...

L1 Influence and Interface Effects in L2 English Unaccusatives

Abstract: The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Sorace & Serratrice, 2009; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006, among others) states that the grammar external interface is more vulnerable for advanced L2ers or bilinguals than the grammar internal interface, and L1 discourse influence is one factor responsible for their residual difficulty (Sorace, 2005; Sorace, Serratrice, Filiaci & Baldo, 2009). Their study, however, did not disentangle interface effects from L1 influence and it is unclear whether the residual difficulty of advanced L2ers is due to interface effects or L1 influence. The results of the present study which teases the two factors apart show that L1 influence is stronger than interface effects. The results without L1 influence show that the syntax-discourse interface is more vulnerable than the syntax-morphology interface, supporting the Interface Hypothesis. This study examines two sets of data, cross-sectional and longitudinal, on overpassivization of L2 English unaccusative verbs by Chinese and Korean speakers.

Comparing anaphora resolution in early and late Brazilian Portuguese-European Portuguese bidialectal bilinguals

Abstract: The present study examines anaphora resolution in two groups of speakers exposed to Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP, respectively), considering the different null subject distribution in these languages. Our research question is whether late BP-EP bilinguals (age of EP onset: 29.1) and heritage BP speakers raised in Portugal (age of EP onset 5.6), tested in both dialects, will pattern like the native controls or display some effects of EP in their native BP or vice-versa. This is an interesting question in light of the Interface Hypothesis, which claims that external interfaces should be subject to general bilingualism effects irrespective of language pairing and age (Sorace, 2011). The results show that age has an effect, as the heritage speakers do not perform like the late learners, and that the high degree of typological proximity between the two languages could hinder bidialectal acquisition.

Look before you move: Clitic Left Dislocation in combination with other elements in the Spanish left periphery

Abstract: The present study examines whether, as proposed by the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011), the syntax-discourse interface is especially vulnerable to non-native optionality even at very advanced levels. I focus on the acquisition of Clitic Left Dislocation in Spanish (CLLD), a structure that involves both syntax and discourse, when it combines with other structures at the left periphery (iterative topics, Fronted Focus, and wh-constructions). CLLD is a realization of topicalization requiring the integration of syntactic and discourse knowledge. This study provides data from an audio-visual rating task completed by 120 learners of Spanish of different proficiency levels and 27 monolingual native speakers. Results showed evidence that the most advanced learners had acquired the restrictions of these structures in a native-like way and supports Lopez’s (2009) syntactic analysis of CLLD, whereby CLLD is generated through movement so that the pragmatic features [+anaphor]/[+contrast] can be assigned to the dislocated element.

The Acquisition of Mandarin Modal Verbs by English Speakers

Abstract: This article aims to investigate the acquisition of Chinese modals by native English speakers based on the production materials in written discourse. The results show that the functional category is accessible to the L2 learners. Their knowledge of the semantic properties of the modals is impaired, as exemplified by the errors: omission, redundancy, word order and misuse. The finding is in conformity with the Interface Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006). Finally, the article explores the implications of this study for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

The acquisition of alternation in a second language

Abstract: This study examines the acquisition of alternation in a second language (L2) by focusing on the acquisition of the copular verbs in Spanish, ser and estar, by native speakers of English, who have only one copula, be, in their first language (L1). Specifically, this thesis focuses on the acquisition of copular cases with adjectival predicates, which can be classified into three groups: adjectives that combine only with ser (e.g. famoso ‘famous’), adjectives combining only with estar (e.g. content ‘happy’) and adjectives that are compatible with both but where only one copula is felicitous ccording to the context (e.g. nervioso ‘nervous’) (i.e. dual adjectives). Two hypotheses were entertained, one dubbed as Syntactic Complexity, according to which the simpler an element is the earlier and better its acquisition is expected to be in an L2, and the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 1993; Sorace and Keller, 2005; Sorace, 2005; Tsimpli and Sorace, 2006; Sorace and Serratrice, 2009; Sorace, 2011, among others), according to which elements whose value depend on an interface (such as the syntax-discourse interface) are expected to be more vulnerable to acquisition. The first hypothesis predicts that ser, by virtue of its simpler syntactic structure (Arche, Fabregas and Marin, to appear), is acquired first and better. The second one predicts difficulties in the acquisition of cases where the two copulas are a possibility (i.e. dual adjectives) but only one copular verb is appropriate according to the context. To assess these two hypotheses a cross-sectional elicitation study was carried out, which elicited the copular alternation of ser and estar with djectival predicates through four, focused oral production and written comprehension tasks. The task design was especially tailored to each adjectival group. Those adjectives that have a fixed syntactic distribution were elicited separately to dual adjectives since only the latter depend on the discursive information for their copular selection. Tasks elicited copular sentences in 108 tokens, of which 36 included 6 only-ser adjectives (e.g. famoso ‘famous’) and 6 only-estar adjectives (e.g. contento ‘happy’) and 72 tokens that contained 18 dual adjectives in contrasting discursive contexts, specifically 6 dual dependent-stage adjectives of physical appearance (e.g. viejo ‘old’), 6 dual dependent-stage adjectives of disposition (e.g. amable ‘kind’) and 6 dual self-standing stage adjectives (e.g. nervioso ‘nervous’). Seventy-one English-speaking learners of Spanish and twenty-five native Peninsular Spanish speakers participated. Results show that L2 acquisition is determined not only by the syntactic properties of the copulas themselves but also by the syntactic properties of the adjectival predicates. Learners were not more accurate with adjectives that have a fixed syntactic distribution than with those that are context-dependent. By contrast, advanced learners attained a native-like level with those adjectives that are grammatically possible in constructions where the property of stage-levelness (associated to estar) is not brought in only by the copula estar, but in other syntactic enviroments such as absolute constructions and subject predicative complements. That is, with only-estar adjectives such as content ‘happy’ and dual self-standing stage adjectives such as nervioso ‘nervous’. In turn, they failed to achieve a target-like alternation when the copulas appear with dual dependent-stage adjectives of physical appearance (e.g. viejo ‘old’) and those of disposition (e.g. amable ‘kind’). Furthermore, results indicate that even learners at higher levels of proficiency have not fully acquired ser, leading them to misuse this copula in constructions where the copula expected was estar. This contradicts much previous research (Geeslin, 2000; Geeslin, 2003; Geeslin, 2005; Geeslin and Guijarro Fuentes, 2006; Woolsey, 2008; Cheng, Lu and Giannakouros, 2008; VanPatten, 2010; Collentine and Asencion Delaney, 2010; among others) that states that ‘ser seems to take care of itself’ (VanPatten 2010, p.33) and that it is easily acquirable.

Re)thinking the Interface Hypothesis and its implications for language teaching

Abstract: The interface between syntax and other domains has recently become a key area of interest in Generative Second Language Acquisition (GenSLA). Much of the research on linguistic interfaces has been influenced by the Interface Hypothesis (IH), which was proposed by Sorace & Filiaci (2006) in an attempt to explain the non-target-like behaviour found at very advanced stages of second language (L2) acquisition. Originally, the IH claimed that narrow syntactic properties are acquirable, whereas properties at the interface between syntax and other domains may not be fully acquirable (cf. Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). In its most recent version, the IH specifies that properties at grammar-external interfaces (i.e. interfaces which connect the grammar to external domains) are more likely to be a source of problems in end-state grammars than properties involving grammar-internal interfaces (i.e. interfaces which link different modules within the grammar) (cf. Sorace & Serratrice, 2009; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006; Sorace, 2011). The IH is, therefore, an account of non-target patterns at the level of ultimate attainment.

The Acquisition of Mandarin Modal Verbs by

Abstract: This article aims to investigate the acquisition of Chinese modals by native English speakers based on the production materials in written discourse. The results show that the functional category is accessible to the L2 learners. Their knowledge of the semantic properties of the modals is impaired, as exemplified by the errors: omission, redundancy, word order and misuse. The finding is in conformity with the Interface Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006). Finally, the article explores the implications of this study for teaching