Acquisition of focus by adult English learners of Hungarian : evidence of optionality in mature and developing grammars
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Date
1999Author
Papp, Szilvia
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Abstract
The process of second language acquisition is usually assumed to be affected by differences
between the source language (L 1) and the target language (L2). Within the Minimalist
approach (Chomsky 1995) crosslinguistic variation is accounted for in terms of differences
in the values of features of functional categories instantiated in specific languages. Mature
English differs from Hungarian in that its Tense category does not carry the [+f] feature
characteristic of Hungarian focused sentences. Also, English lacks an additional functional
projection dominating IP, namely F(ocus)P(hrase), which hosts focused, wh-, and negative
operators in Spec,FP and attracts the verb or adjectival predicate into its head in order to
satisfy spec-head agreement. It follows that English learners of Hungarian will have . to
instantiate a new functional category FP and reset the values of the Tense category in their
IL grammar.
In this thesis we account for the difficulties faced by adult English learners of Hungarian by
adopting the hypothesis that the two main classes of features have distinct learnability
properties. It has been suggested that interpretable features (among them phi-features of
nouns as well as [+wh] and [+f] features) are acquired easier than non-interpretable features
(such as features responsible for V2 word order, resumptive pronouns, verbal inflection and
nominal case morphology, as well as verb-movement associated with the Focus Projection in
Hungarian). We demonstrate that this effect is also found -in our English-Hungarian
interlanguage data. We show that even though L2 learners manage to prepose wh, focus and
negative operators, they have continued difficulties with the accompanying verb-movement
properties of Hungarian. This is reminiscent of the difficulties we find in child L 1 language
acquisition of Hungarian.
However, we argue that learnability factors have to be complemented by considerations
about the nature of the target language input L2 learners receive. We propose that the nature
of the TL input accounts for the differences between child and adult learners of Hungarian. It
is well known that robust data (i.e. simple, salient and frequently occurring sentences) are
required for the acquisition of correct feature-specifications of a target language. Infrequent
data may cause a delay in the process of establishing L2 feature specifications and result in
incomplete representations. Ambiguous data, on the other hand, are Iikely to ultimately result
in divergent L2 representations at near native level.
Testing these predictions in a study of acceptability judgements of adult English-speaking
learners of Hungarian, we show that adult English speaking learners of Hungarian have
difficulties in acquiring double wh- and double focus constructions as well as focused
infinitives, long and partial operator movement in Hungarian. It is demonstrated that in the
case of double wh- and double focus constructions native speakers' intuitions are
indeterminate/optional, therefore the data L2 learners receive are not robust, leading to
optionality in learners' interlanguage grammars. Although enjoying categorical judgements
in native grammars, the nature of the input is similarly non-robust in the case of focused
infinitives as well as long and partially extracted operator sentences. This is argued to lead to
the difficulties L2 learners exhibit with respect to these structures. In the face of non-robust
target language data learners are found to fall back on L 1 values and/or to resort to general
learning strategies, such as overgeneralization and analogy.