Feature dependency and the poverty of the stimulus in the
acquisition of L2 German plural allomorphy
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.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Interfaces in SLA
- 3.Multiple exponence versus allomorphy
- 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
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