Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:10:59.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interface conditions on postverbal subjects: A corpus study of L2 English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2010

CRISTÓBAL LOZANO  and
AMAYA MENDIKOETXEA
CRISTÓBAL LOZANO*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Granada
AMAYA MENDIKOETXEA
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
*
Address for correspondence: Cristóbal Lozano, Universidad de Granada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Granada 18071, Spain[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper investigates how syntactic knowledge interfaces with other cognitive systems by analysing the production of postverbal subjects, V(erb)–S(ubject) order, in an L1 Spanish–L2 English corpus and a comparable English native corpus. VS order in both native and L2 English is shown to be constrained by properties operating at three interfaces: (i) lexicon–syntax: the verb is unaccusative (Unaccusative Hypothesis); (ii) syntax–discourse: the subject is focus (End-Focus Principle) and (iii) syntax–phonology: the subject is heavy (End-Weight Principle). We show that, since learners produce VS under the same interface conditions as native speakers, unaccusativity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for VS production. However, learners overproduce VS and make persistent errors in their syntactic encoding. Our findings support recent proposals that these difficulties stem from problems at coordinating syntactic knowledge with knowledge from other external systems, but they suggest that the nature of such difficulties is not external to the syntax.

Keywords

interfacescorpustransferprocessingunaccusative
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 475 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This work has been supported by research grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (HUM2005-0127/FILO) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2008-01584 and EDU2008-01268). Previous versions were presented in Corpus Linguistics 2007, EUROSLA 17, and BUCLD 33. We wish to thank the audiences at those conferences and all members of the WOSLAC team (http://www.uam.es/woslac). We are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are ours.

References

Arnold, J. E., Wasow, T., Losongco, A., & Ginstrom, R. (2000). Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language, 76 (1), 28–55.Google Scholar
Baker, M. (1988). Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Balcom, P. (1997). Why is this happened? Passive morphology and unaccusativity. Second Language Research, 13 (1), 1–9.Google Scholar
Beaman, K. (1984). Co-ordination and subordination revisited: Syntactic complexity in spoken and written narrative discourse. In Tannen, D. (ed.), Conversational style, pp. 45–80. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Belletti, A. (2001). ‘Inversion’ as focalization. In Hulk, A. & Pollock, J. (eds.), Subject inversion in Romance and the theory of Universal Grammar, pp. 60–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Belletti, A. (2004). Aspects of the lower IP area. In Rizzi, L. (ed.), The structure of CP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures (vol. 2), pp. 16–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Belletti, A., Bennati, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 25, 657–689.Google Scholar
Belletti, A., & Leonini, C. (2004). Subject inversion in L2 Italian. In Foster-Cohen, S., Sharwood Smith, M., Sorace, A. & Mitsuhiko, O. (eds.), EUROSLA yearbook 4, pp. 95–118. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Birner, B. J. (1994). Information status and word order: An analysis of English inversion. Language, 70 (2), 233–259.Google Scholar
Birner, B. J. (1995). Pragmatic constraints on the verb in English inversion. Lingua, 97, 233–256.Google Scholar
Birner, B. J., & Ward, G. (1993). There-sentences and inversion as distinct constructions: A functional account. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 19, 27–39.Google Scholar
Birner, B. J., & Ward, G. (1998). Information status and noncanonical word order in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1954). Meaningful word order in Spanish. Boletín de Filología, 7, 45–56.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1977). Meaning and form. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (1994). Locative inversion and the architecture of Universal Grammar. Language, 70 (1), 71–131.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries. In Martin, R., Michaels, D. & Uriagereka, J. (eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, pp. 89–156. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry, 36, 1–22.Google Scholar
Cole, M. (2000). The syntax, morphology, and semantics of null subjects. Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. W., & Levine, R. D. (2001). Stylistic inversion in English: A reconsideration. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 19, 283–310.Google Scholar
de Miguel, E. (1993). Construcciones ergativas e inversión en la lengua y la interlengua española. In Liceras, J. M. (ed.), La lingüística y el análisis de los sistemas no nativos, pp. 178–195. Ottawa: Dovehouse.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T., & Van Heuven, W. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175–197.Google Scholar
Domínguez, L. (2004). Mapping focus: The syntax and prosody of focus in Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
É. Kiss, K. (1998). Identificational focus versus information focus. Language, 74 (2), 245–273.Google Scholar
Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, S. D. (1999). Un-principled syntax: The derivation of syntactic relations. In Epstein, S. D. & Hornstein, N. (eds.), Working minimalism, pp. 317–345. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fernández Soriano, O. (1993). Sobre el orden de palabras en español. Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica, 11, 113–151.Google Scholar
Frampton, J., & Gutmann, S. (1999). Cyclic computation, a computationally efficient minimalist syntax. Syntax, 2, 1–27.Google Scholar
Gass, S., & Schachter, J. (eds.) (1989). Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Granger, S., Dagneaux, E., & Meunier, F. (eds.) (2002). International Corpus of Learner English (includes CD version 1.1). Louvain: UCL [Université Catholique de Louvain] Presses Universitaires de Louvain.Google Scholar
Green, D. W. (1998). Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 67–81.Google Scholar
Hannay, M., & Martínez Caro, E. (2008). Thematic choice in the written English of advanced Spanish and Dutch learners. In Gilquin, G., Papp, S. & Díez, B. (eds.), Linking up contrastive and learner corpus research, pp. 227–254. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hertel, T. J. (2003). Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order. Second Language Research, 19 (4), 273–304.Google Scholar
Hirakawa, M. (1999). L2 acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs by speakers of English and Chinese. In Kanno, K. (ed.), The acquisition of Japanese as a second language, pp. 89–114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J. (1984). On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry, 15, 531–574.Google Scholar
Hulk, A., & Pollock, J.-Y. (2001). Subject inversion in Romance and the theory of Universal Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ivanov, I. P. (2009). Second language acquisition of Bulgarian object clitics: A test case for the Interface Hypothesis. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Jaeggli, O., & Safir, K. (eds.) (1989). The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Ju, M. K. (2000). Overpassivization errors by second language learners: The effect of conceptualizable agents in discourse. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 85–111.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, G. (2005). It-extraposition and non-extraposition in English: A study of syntax in spoken and written texts. Vienna: Wilhem Braumüller.Google Scholar
Klein, W., & Perdue, C. (1992). Utterance structure: Developing grammars. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Koopman, H., & Sportiche, D. (1991). The position of subjects. Lingua, 85, 211–258.Google Scholar
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport-Hovav, M. (1995). Unaccusativity at the syntax–lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Liceras, J., Soloaga, B., & Carballo, A. (1994). Los conceptos de tema y rema: problemas sintácticos y estilísticos de la adquisición del español. Hispanic Linguistics, 5 (1–2), 43–88.Google Scholar
Lozano, C. (2003). Universal Grammar and focus constraints: The acquisition of pronouns and word order in non-native Spanish. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Lozano, C. (2006a). Focus and split intransitivity: The acquisition of word order alternations in non-native Spanish. Second Language Research, 22 (2), 1–43.Google Scholar
Lozano, C. (2006b). The development of the syntax–discourse interface: Greek learners of Spanish. In Torrens, V. & Escobar, L. (eds.), The acquisition of syntax in Romance languages, pp. 371–399. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lozano, C., & Mendikoetxea, A. (2008). Postverbal subjects at the interfaces in Spanish and Italian learners of L2 English: A corpus analysis. In Gilquin, G., Papp, S. & Díez, B. (eds.), Linking up contrastive and learner corpus research, pp. 85–125. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Lozano, C., & Mendikoetxea, A. (2009a). “It exist(s) many problems”: Learner language in learner corpora and the study of SLA. Presented at ICAME 30, University of Lancaster, UK.Google Scholar
Lozano, C., & Mendikoetxea, A. (2009b). Discourse before syntax in non-native grammars: Converging evidence. Plenary talk at Workshop on Interfaces in L2 Acquisition, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.Google Scholar
Mendikoetxea, A. (2006). Unergatives that ‘become’ unaccusatives in English locative inversion: A lexical-syntactic approach. In Copy, C. & Gournay, L. (eds.), Points de vue sur l'inversion (Cahiers de Recherche en Grammaire Anglaise de l'Énonciation, vol. 9), pp. 133–155. Paris: Editions Orphys.Google Scholar
Meunier, F. (2000). A computer corpus linguistics approach to interlanguage grammar: Noun phrase complexity in advanced learner writing. Ph.D. thesis, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (1999). Causative errors with unaccusative verbs in L2 Spanish. Second Language Research, 15 (2), 191–219.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004). Psycholinguistic evidence for split intransitivity in Spanish second language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 239–267.Google Scholar
Ortega, L. (2000). Understanding syntactic complexity: The measurement of change in the syntax of instructed L2 Spanish learners. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii at Manoa.Google Scholar
Ortega, L. (2003). Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to L2 proficiency: A research synthesis of college-level writing. Applied Linguistics, 24 (4), 492–518.Google Scholar
Ortega-Santos, I. (2005). On Locative Inversion and the EPP in Spanish. Presented at VIII Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística del Noroeste, Universidad de Sonora, México.Google Scholar
Oshita, H. (2000). What is happened may not be what appears to be happening: A corpus study of ‘passive’ unaccusatives in L2 English. Second Language Research, 16 (4), 293–324.Google Scholar
Oshita, H. (2004). Is there anything there when there is not there? Null expletives and second language data. Second Language Research, 20 (2), 95–130.Google Scholar
Palacios-Martínez, I., & Martínez-Insua, A. (2006). Connecting linguistic description and language teaching: Native and learner use of existential there. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16 (2), 213–231.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D. (1978). Impersonal passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. In Berkeley Linguistics Society, 4, pp. 157–189.Google Scholar
Phinney, M. (1987). The pro-drop parameter in second language acquisition. In Roeper, T & Williams, E. (eds.), Parameter setting, pp. 221–238. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Prince, E. F. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given–new information. In Cole, P. (ed.), Radical pragmatics, pp. 223–255. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Prince, E. F. (1992). The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness and information status. In Thompson, S. & Mann, W. (eds.), Discourse description: Diverse analyses of a fund raising text, pp. 295–325. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (1982). Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Rochemont, M. (1986). A theory of stylistic rules in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.Google Scholar
Rollinson, P., & Mendikoetxea, A. (2010). Learner corpora and second language acquisition: Introducing WriCLE. In Bueno Alonso, J. L., González Álvarez, D., Kirsten Torrado, U., Martínez Insúa, A., Pérez Guerra, J., Rama Martínez, E. & Rodríguez Vázquez, R. (eds.), Analizar datos>Describir variación/Analysing data>Describing variation, pp. 1–12. Vigo: Universidade de Vigo.Describir+variación/Analysing+data>Describing+variation,+pp.+1–12.+Vigo:+Universidade+de+Vigo.>Google Scholar
Rutherford, W. (1989). Interlanguage and pragmatic word order. In Gass & Schachter (eds.), pp. 163–182.Google Scholar
Safir, K. (1985). Syntactic chains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, M. (2004). Oxford WordSmith Tools (version 4.0). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Downloadable version at http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith (retrieved January 1, 2007).]Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (1993). Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity in non-native grammars of Italian. Second Language Research, 9 (1), 22–47.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax–discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7 (2), 143–145.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2005). Selective optionality in language development. In Cornips, L. & Corrigan, K. P. (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social, pp. 55–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13 (2), 195–210.Google Scholar
Taboada, M. (1995). Theme markedness in English and Spanish: A systemic-functional approach. Ms., Universidad Complutense de Madrid.Google Scholar
Torrego, E. (1989). Unergative–unaccusative alternations in Spanish. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 253–272.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I.-M., & Roussou, A. (1991). Parameter re-setting in L2. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 3, 149–169.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I.-M., & Sorace, A. (2006). Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax–semantics and syntax–discourse phenomena. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 653–664. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Vallduví, E. (1993). The informational component (IRCS Technical Reports). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (1997). End-weight from the speaker's perspective. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 347–361.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (2002). Postverbal behavior. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
White, L. (1986). Implications of parametric variation for adult second language acquisition: An investigation of the pro-drop parameter. In Cook, V. J. (ed.), Experimental approaches to second language acquisition, pp. 55–72. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
White, L. (2009). Grammatical theory: Interfaces and L2 knowledge. In Ritchie, W. C. & Bhatia, T. K. (eds.), The new handbook of second language acquisition (2nd rev. edn.), pp. 49–68. Bingley: Emerald.Google Scholar
Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37 (2), 275–296.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1989). Canonical typological structures and ergativity in English L2 acquisition. In Gass & Schachter (eds.), pp. 203–221.Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, M. L. (1998). Prosody, focus, and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar