Investigating the fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisition based on syntax : a fresh look at the development of German L1 and L2

Abstract

This thesis investigates the developmental path of German first language (L1) children focusing on the order of elements in speech and what is signaled by the ordering of constituents. It attempts to contribute to the ongoing debate about the differences and similarities between L1 and second language (L2) acquisition. Proposals about the existence of a fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisition were raised more than twenty years ago (Bley-Vroman 1988 & 1990) with Clahsen and Muysken (1986) specifically claiming that differences in L1 and L2 development may be a reflection of the different initial hypothesis of syntax adopted by L1/L2 learners supporting their claim with reference to patterns of syntactic development in German first language acquisition. After two decades of research and discussion the fundamental difference hypothesis remains current in the agenda of acquisitional linguists (see, for instance, Slabakova 2009; Meisel 2011), which lends motivation to the present investigation. Bloom (1991, p.1) points out that the period from 2 to 3 years is the time "when children acquire their basic knowledge of semantics, syntax, morphology, and discourse" and, even more importantly, in which their linguistic development goes through rapid changes. In regard to syntax, the first few months of this time period are particularly marked by substantial changes, as utterances start to contain more than two words hence the ordering of constituents becomes a key factor in the distribution of information. Yet, while there have been numerous studies of first language development in German and other languages none has focused intensively on this developmentally crucial period of time. This study aims to address this gap by looking at the syntactic and morphological development of German L1 children between the age of 2;1 to 2;4 years, that point in development when the child becomes able to produce strings of two words or more focusing on the development of word order, including canonical order and cases in which it may be altered (e.g. topicalizations). As an additional contribution, this study also attempts to capture the development of question formation, another area of interest in terms of constituent order, as well as morphological development, specifically the emergence and deployment of SVagreement, to look at the sort of syntactic development such long-distance agreement aligns with. This allows further exploration of potential areas of fundamental differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. The study is carried out within the theoretical framework of Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998a; Pienemann, Di Biase & Kawaguchi 2005), which offers a typologically and psychologically plausible transitional framework based on universal speech processing mechanisms that aims to explain the developmental sequences involved in syntactic and morphological development. Despite the hypothesized fundamental differences PT proposes that both L1 and L2 developmental sequences are explainable in terms of the universal nature of human information processing, which is subject to constraints such as limited capacity of working memory and speed of lexical access (Levelt 1989; Bock & Levelt 1994). To address such issues this study gathered three separate data pools. The first and main pool comprises three concurrent longitudinal data sets collected specifically for the current dissertation in Germany from oral production of two German L1 children and one German/Polish L1 bilingual child attending the same kindergarten. They were recorded over a period of four months at weekly intervals. The second data pool consists of five longitudinal data sets of German L1 children available from the CHILDES data base (Wagner n.d.; Clahsen 1982; and Rigol 1991-1999), while the third pool comprises three longitudinal data sets from German L2 adult learners of Italian L1 background collected as part of the ZISA project ( Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann 1981). Overall results from the current study reveal that, at least in terms of the development of word order, there is no fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisitional paths. Contrary to what has been suggested (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; Pienemann 1998b), the findings are consistent with the proposition that German L1 children follow a developmental path similar to L2 learners in their acquisition of German word order. This calls into question the claim that the hypothesised fundamental difference is based on children's different initial hypotheses as against adult L2 acquirers (Clahsen and Muysken 1986).

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English