Cover not available
Part of
Generative SLA in the Age of Minimalism: Features, interfaces, and beyond
Edited by Tania Leal, Elena Shimanskaya and Casilde A. Isabelli
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 67] 2022
► pp. 117–136

Feature dependency and the poverty of the stimulus in the acquisition of L2 German plural allomorphy

| University of Victoria

In this study, I investigated the acquisition of L2 German plural allomorphy via a written production task of classroom learners in North America. Trommer (2015) has argued that the mutual exclusivity of marking plural by either an [n] suffix or an umlauted (i.e. [CORONAL]) stem vowel derives from a universal property of phonological representations. The crossing of association lines, which would result from doubly linking the [CORONAL] feature (which marks the plural), is banned. The data show that the learners made many errors, but that the number of forms which suggested a violation of this universal property were statistically insignificant. I argue that these data are consistent with models showing that interlanguage phonologies are governed by universal phonological principles.

Keywords: L2 phonology, allomorphy, universal grammar, feature geometry, interfaces
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Interfaces in SLA
  • 3.Multiple exponence versus allomorphy
    • 3.1Feature geometry
  • 4.SLA and allomorphy
    • 4.1Methodology
      • 4.1.1Test items T1
      • 4.1.2Test Items T2: The test items at time 2 are given in Table 4
      • 4.1.3Data analysis
      • 4.1.4The task
      • 4.1.5Phonology, silent reading, and lexical activation
      • 4.1.6Bilingual lexicon and non-selective access
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Errors X word type: T1
    • 5.2Errors X word type: T2
    • 5.3No impossible Turkish grammars
      • 5.3.1Secondary feature spreading
      • 5.3.2No crossing constraint
    • 5.4No impossible German grammars
    • 5.5Poverty of the stimulus
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.67.05arc
References
Archibald, J.
(2016) Phonology at the interface: Late insertion and spell out in L2 morphophonology. Paper presented at News Sounds 2016, Aarhus, Denmark.
Archibald, J., & Croteau, N.
(2021) Acquisition of L2 Japanese WH questions: Evidence of phonological contiguity and non-shallow structures. Second Language Research, 37(4), 649–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Avery, P., & Rice, K.
(1989) Segment structure and coronal underspecification. Phonology, 6, 179–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bader, M.
(1998) Prosodic influences on reading syntactically ambiguous sentences. In J. D. Fodor & F. Ferreira (Eds.), Reanalysis in sentence processing (pp. 1–46). Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R.
(1990) The logical problem of foreign language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20, 3–49.Google Scholar
(2009) The evolving context of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 321, 175–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bonet, E., & Harbour, D.
(2012) Contextual allomorphy. In J. Trommer (Ed.), Morphology and phonology of exponence (pp. 195–235). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C.
(2017) Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(3), 693–706. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, D. W. J.
(1966) An acoustic factor in letter cancellation. Nature, 210, 658. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1967) Acoustic factor in proof reading. Nature, 214, 851–852. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corder, S. P.
(1967) The significance of learners’ errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 5, 160–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dijkstra, T., Grainger, J., & Van Heuven, W. J. B.
(1999) Recognition of cognates and interlingual homographs: The neglected role of phonology. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 496–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dresher, B. E.
(2009) The contrastive hierarchy in phonology. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, D.
(2010) Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology. MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D.
(2002) Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In M. Hirotani (Ed.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society, 32 (pp. 112–132). GSLA.Google Scholar
Franceschina, F.
(2001) Morphological or syntactic deficits in near – native speakers? An assessment of some current proposals. Second Language Research, 17(3), 213–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goad, H., & White, L.
(2019) Prosodic effects on L2 grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 9, 769–808. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Ultimate attainment in interlanguage grammars: A prosodic approach. Second Language Research, 22, 243–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, J.
(1976) Autosegmental phonology (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). MIT.
Hall, D. C.
(2017) Contrastive specification in phonology. In M. Aronoff (Ed.) Oxford research encyclopedia in linguistics. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hammond, M.
(1988) On deriving the well – formedness condition. Linguistic Inquiry, 19(2), 319–325.Google Scholar
Harris, A.
(2017) Multiple exponence. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R., & Chan, C. Y-H.
(1997) The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: The ‘Failed Functional Features Hypothesis.’ Second Language Research, 13, 187–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Itô, J., Mester, A., & Padgett, J.
(1995) Licensing and underspecification in Optimality Theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 26(4), 571–613.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, S.
(2011) Contrast and the evaluation of similarity: Evidence from consonant harmony. Lingua, 121, 1401–1423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCutchen, D., & Perfetti, C.
(1982) The visual tongue – twister effect: Phonological activation in silent reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21, 672–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McGuian, F.J. and Dollins, A.B.
1989 Patterns of covert speech behavior and phonetic coding. Pavlovian Journal of Biological Science, 24, 19-26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S.
(2011) Multiple interfaces and incomplete acquisition. Lingua, 121, 591–604. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakayama, M. & J. Archibald
(2005) Eyetracking and interlingual homographs. Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistic Association.Google Scholar
Özçelik, Ö., & Sprouse, R.
(2016) Emergent knowledge of a universal phonological principle in the L2 acquisition of vowel harmony in Turkish: A ‘four’ – fold poverty of the stimulus in L2 acquisition. Second Language Research, 33(2), 179–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parodi, T., Schwartz, B., & Clahsen, H.
(2004) On the L2 acquisition of the morphosyntax of German nominals. Linguistics, 42(3), 669–705. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rice, K.
(1994) Peripheral in Consonants. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne De Linguistique, 39(3), 191-216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rice K.
(1996) Default variability: The coronal-velar relationship Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 14: 493-543. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, B. D., & Sprouse, R.
(1996) L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research, 12, 40–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, M., & Goad, H.
(2016) Indirect positive evidence in the acquisition of a subset grammar. Language Acquisition, 24(3), 234–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A.
(2012) Pinning down the concept of interface in bilingual development. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(2), 209–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanich, S., Cabrelli, J., Hilderman, D., & Archibald, J.
(2019) The morphophonology of intraword codeswitching: Representation and processing. Frontiers in Communication: Language Sciences, 4, 54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trommer, J.
(2015) Moraic affixes and morphological colors in Dinka. Linguistic Inquiry, 46(1), 77–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) The subsegmental structure of German plural allomorphy. Talk given at the University of Victoria.
White, L.
(2011) Second language acquisition at the interfaces. Lingua, 121, 577–590. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wiese, R.
(1996) The phonology of German. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wunderlich, D.
(1999) German noun plural reconsidered. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22(6), 1044–1045. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zaretsky, E., Lange, B., Euler, H., & Neumann, K.
(2013) Acquisition of German pluralization rules in monolingual and multilingual children. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 3(4), 551–580. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zimmermann, E.
(2017) Morphological length and prosodically defective morphemes. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Archibald, John
2023. Phonological parsing via an integrated I-language. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:6 ► pp. 743 ff. DOI logo
Archibald, John
2024. Phonology in Multilingual Grammars, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.