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Volume 14, Issue 2, 2024
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Naïve English-speaking learners’ use of indirect positive evidence
Author(s): Ying Li and Heather Goadpp.: 115–146 (32)More LessAbstractWhen second language learners are faced with acquiring a grammar that is a subset of their native language grammar, direct positive evidence is unavailable. We question whether learners can instead use indirect positive evidence: evidence drawn from errors in the learner’s L1 made by native speakers of the learner’s L2. We examine if naïve English-speaking learners of Mandarin can determine from plural omission errors in Mandarin speakers’ English productions that Mandarin marks plural in a subset of conditions under which English does. Participants were exposed to indirect positive evidence via an English-medium dialogue where a native Mandarin-speaking interlocutor produced all contextually plural nouns as singulars. Subsequently, participants learnt 12 Mandarin-like nouns in singular contexts, after which their word learning was tested using both singular and plural pictures as prompts. Forty percent of participants correctly deduced that strings to which they had assigned singular interpretations were also appropriate in plural contexts. Follow-up questions revealed that they noticed the errors in the dialogue and used these to inform their understanding of plural marking in Mandarin. This result suggests that indirect positive evidence may be an effective tool for real language learners to acquire a grammar that is a subset of their native grammar.
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L2 tolerance of pragmatic violations of informativeness
Author(s): Shuo Fengpp.: 147–177 (31)More LessAbstractThis study sets out to investigate second language (L2) speakers’ derivation of pragmatic inferences and tolerance of violations of informativeness in two types of inferences, i.e., ad hoc implicatures and contrastive inference. The results of a graded judgment task revealed that pragmatic tolerance is inference-specific: L2 speakers were overly tolerant of underinformative statements in ad hoc implicatures than in contrastive inference. In addition, L2 speakers were found to be more relaxed with overinformativeness than underinformativeness in contrastive inference. The fact that L2 speakers tend to be redundant (overinformative) than ambiguous (underinformative) is further discussed with the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (Lozano, 2016). This study hopes to contribute to a more find-grained understanding of L2 speakers’ abilities of deriving pragmatic inferences.
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Null and overt pronoun interpretation in L2 Mandarin resultative constructions
Author(s): Roumyana Slabakova, Lucy Zhao, Lewis Baker, James Turner and Elina Tuniyanpp.: 178–217 (40)More LessAbstractThis experimental study examines the acquisition of null and overt pronoun interpretations in Chinese as a second language by native speakers of English. A linguistic phenomenon not present in the native language of the learners is identified: the null element in the embedded subject position of Mandarin resultative constructions can only refer to the main-clause subject, while an overt pronoun in the same position can refer both to the main-clause subject and to another entity in the discourse. Thus the acquisition task includes learning a new functional morpheme, a null element, as well as constraining its interpretation in the resultative construction. We tested 59 L2 learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels and 51 native Mandarin speakers on a Truth Value Judgment Task. The learners showed a pattern of interpretation that was statistically indistinguishable from the native speakers’ in all but one context. We argue that our findings point to largely successful acquisition of the requisite proform interpretations, even though the restrictions on the interpretation of null elements cannot be transferred from the native language.
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Relative clauses in child heritage speakers of Turkish in the United States
Author(s): Aylin Coşkun Kunduz and Silvina Montrulpp.: 218–254 (37)More LessAbstractHow does complex syntax develop in heritage language children? This study investigates child Turkish heritage speakers’ comprehension and production of relative clauses (RCs) in Turkish and in English. RCs vary on their syntactic functions (subject, object) and show asymmetric patterns of acquisition and processing, which have been explained by linear distance, structural distance and input factors. Thirty-two child Turkish HS (ages 6–15) and 48 monolingual Turkish children (ages 3–15) completed a picture-sentence matching (comprehension) task and a sentence repetition (production) task in Turkish. The Turkish HS were tested on the RC comprehension and production tasks in English as well. The results indicated that the child HS showed (i) better performance in English than in Turkish with increasing age, (ii) better comprehension than production of Turkish RCs, (iii) replacement of complex RCs with simple juxtaposition in Turkish, and (iv) a subject advantage in comprehension. We take these findings to suggest that Turkish RCs do not fully develop in child HS of Turkish in the U.S., although the strength of this explanation must be corroborated by a study of child and adult HS. Overall, the findings are most compatible with the structural distance account and other factors that may affect production.
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L2 acquisition of the Chinese plural marker -men by English and Korean speakers
Author(s): Jiajia Supp.: 255–284 (30)More LessAbstractThis article investigates the L2 acquisition of the Chinese plural maker -men by English and Korean speakers within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2009). The Chinese plural suffix -men, the Korean plural suffix -tul, and the English plural suffix -s share some properties and differ on others. Thirty-two English-speaking learners and thirty-five Korean-speaking learners of Chinese of advanced and intermediate proficiency were tested using a truth value judgment task and a grammaticality judgment task. Results show that: (i) all the L2 groups have acquired the target feature set of -men (i.e., [plural, specific, human]); (ii) the two English groups and the advanced Korean group but not the intermediate Korean group have acquired the conditions on the overt realization of -men (i.e., optionality with demonstratives and prohibition with classifiers). The results are consistent with the FRH: differences in how features are assembled in lexical items and differences in conditions on feature realization between the L1 and L2 lead to acquisition difficulty; such difficulty can be overcome, though native-like performance is not guaranteed.