To conclude, we briefly consider a few key issues that seem likely to shape the direction of future research in formal linguistic approaches to the study of the L2 acquisition of syntax and morpho-syntax. The first issue is whether acquisition researchers can continue to generate interesting testable hypotheses for language acquisition based on syntactic theory, especially Minimalist syntactic theory.
As R. Hawkins (2008, p. 445) points out, some of the properties that had been the basis for hypotheses about the availability of UG in SLA disappear under Minimalist assumptions. He cites Chomsky's (2001) suggestion that verb-raising, a formerly-parameterized core grammatical option that many generative SLA researchers have spent years intensively studying (see, e.g., Ayoun, 2003; R. Hawkins, 2001b; White, 2003 for discussion and summary overviews), is no longer a property of core or “narrow” syntax, but rather a consequence of linearization procedures at the interface with phonology (as are virtually all word-order phenomena now). If that is so, Hawkins writes, then L2 research on the acquisition of differences in verb-raising “would shed no light on the availability of innately determined features and computations in this domain” (p. 445).
Marantz (1995) refers to this ongoing relegation of formerly syntactic phenomena to the interfaces with phonology and semantics/pragmatics as “the end of syntax”:
The syntactic engine itself—the autonomous principles of composition and manipulation Chomsky now labels “the computational system”– has begun to fade into the background. ... A vision of the end of syntax—the end of the sub-field of linguistics that takes the computational system, between the interfaces, as its primary object of study—this vision encompasses the completion rather than the disappearance of syntax. (pp. 380–381)
As Marantz points out, however, this shift has the positive consequence of forcing syntacticians to “renew their interface credentials” by paying serious attention to work in phonology and semantics (p. 381; see also Jackendoff, 2002). The same is true, of course, for the study of language acquisition, including L2 acquisition. If the Minimalist vision of syntax is too general and abstract to allow us to generate testable predictions for SLA grammatical
research, then such predictions will have to come from our developing understanding of the interaction of syntactic computation with other components of language knowledge. (See White, 2009 for an overview of recent L2 research which addresses linguistic interfaces.)
Another question is the extent to which special and general nativist concerns will continue to converge, and the limits of each approach. As J. Hawkins (2004, p. 273) observes, regardless of whether UG constructs such as subjacency constraints fall by the wayside as possible grounds for innateness claims in formal linguistics (a conclusion he persuasively argues for), there nonetheless remains a poverty-of-the-stimulus problem in language acquisition that must be addressed, “since one does have to explain how the child learns the limits on the set of possible sentences that go beyond the positive data to which he or she has been exposed.” We asked earlier: What can replace or recapture the original highly restrictive role of parameters in earlier UG theory? After all, a major motivation for positing parameters was to account not only for observed recurring cross-linguistic tendencies, but also for the observed rapid, uniformly successful acquisition of language by young children.
J. Hawkins’ own general-nativist solution (like that of O'Grady, 1996, 2008) is that language learners will comprehend input and construct grammars in accordance with innate processing and learning mechanisms, and that hierarchies of processing ease vs. complexity may structure initial hypotheses about the target grammar. Extensions beyond these initial hypotheses will need to be justified by the data of experience, just as we have posited for parameters. Because Chomsky's own current (2005, 2007) agenda for Minimalist syntax encompasses pursuing this latter possibility to account for language acquisition, we can anticipate that a consideration of proposed processing constraints and hierarchies such as those proposed by Hawkins will become increasingly important to special nativists as well as to general nativists in future SLA research. More specifically, Hawkins suggests that it will be important to find out whether factors thought to facilitate L2 acquisition, such as frequency effects and L1–L2 similarities, also operate within the ease-of-processing hierarchies and constraints that are hypothesized to account for crosslinguistic variation and native language acquisition (p. 275).
A final, related question we might ask is whether the P&P/Minimalist approach offers the best analytical tools for the job to those of us who work on formal linguistic approaches to grammatical acquisition. The answer, of course, depends on precisely what we are interested in studying, but future research at the “interfaces” with morphosyntax will require increasing
familiarity with additional frameworks that are better suited for analyzing the type of data that interact with the syntactic computational component. The (optimality-theoretic-based) work by Goad and White (2004, 2006, 2008) on phonological analyses of prosodic factors impinging on morphological production, discussed earlier in this chapter, offers a striking case in point. For the acquisition of morphosyntax in particular, Carroll (2009, p. 252) argues that categorial and phrase structure grammatical frameworks offer a far richer theory of features and categories than Minimalism, and suggests that the field of SLA would benefit from a broader, “less parochial” perspective on syntactic theoretical frameworks than it has held over the past two decades.
Notes
* I am grateful to Lydia White and the editors of this volume for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
1 For a useful historical summary of refinements to conditions on wh-movement and their applicability to SLA, see Belikova and White (2009).
2 See O'Grady (1999) for a discussion of nativism and points of consensus as well as differences between general and special nativism.
3 This principle was originally proposed as the Extended Projection Principle in Chomsky (1981) and has undergone considerable revision over the evolution of P&P theory. The requirement that all clauses have subjects has more recently been recast as the Subject Criterion (Rizzi, 2006).
4 From these (mainly grouped, cross-sectional) L2 studies of morpheme suppliance in obligatory contexts, a developmental sequence or “natural order” of morpheme acquisition was extrapolated that cut across the various L1 backgrounds of the study participants, thus apparently minimizing the role of L1 influence. See various comprehensive introductory SL A course texts (e.g., R. Ellis, 2008; Gass and Selinker, 2008; Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991) for morpheme-order study references and an overview.
5 A mature grammatical representation includes knowledge of syntactic phrase structure in which open-class, lexical-headed constituents such as verb phrases (VPs) and noun phrases (NPs) are grammatically contextualized, or extended, by hierarchically nesting them within functional- category-headed phrases such as “Complementizer phrases” (CP), “Infl(ectional)” phrases (IP, later subdivided into Tense and Agreement (TP/AgrP) as well as other functional subcategories), “Determiner phrases” (DP), and “Number phrases” (NumP) that encode formal features related to clause type, tense and agreement, definiteness, and plurality, respectively. The derived syntactic structure could be modeled something like that shown in (i), where “Spec(ifier)” represents a type of subject position:
(i) [CP Spec [C] [IP Spec [I] [VP Spec [V] [DP [D] [NumP [Num] [NP]]]]]] The overall CP>IP >VP hierarchy for clauses shown in (i) is broadly accepted as universal among P&P researchers, although the many (possibly language-specific) subcategories associated with these more general categories are subject to considerable debate. (Haegeman, 2006 provides an accessible introductory overview.)
6 There is some question in the syntactic literature regarding the “true” plural status of men suffixation in Chinese; see Li (1999) for arguments in support of the “plural marker” view. See Lardiere (2009a) for additional discussion.
certain nouns, which is why it is necessary to posit an underlying abstract morphosyntactic feature [+plural] that may be spelled out differently for different lexical items depending on particular language-specific conditioning factors (such as particular lexical roots, e.g., foot, ox, mouse, woman, etc.).
8 Technically, these terms are not interchangeable, as noted as far back as Chomsky (1965), although in actual practice they often are. Linguists have mostly assumed that grammatical knowledge is categorical— sentences are either grammatical or ungrammatical—and that the continuous spectrum of acceptability is caused by extra-grammatical factors (plausibility, working memory limitations, etc.) (Sprouse, 2007, p. 118).
9 However, see Nicolis (2008) for one apparently exceptionless implicational correlation between referential and expletive null subjects in null-subject languages, and an explanation for the correlation.
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