Conservation of grammatical knowledge: on the acquisition of possessive noun phrases by Turkish and Moroccan learners of Dutch

Abstract This article deals with the acquisition of possessive DP structures by Turkish and Moroccan adults and children learning Dutch without substantial classroom instruction. Our main claim is that L2 learners systematically and consistently rely on their grammatical knowledge, which surfaces in the initial stages of the L2 acquisition process but also has a strong impact on later developmental stages. Such a strong conservation encompasses parameter settings as well as morphological and vocabulary knowledge. Before analyzing the various learner variants, we first consider the possessive structures in Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, and Dutch. A thorough analysis of the source languages Turkish and Moroccan Arabic is necessary to reveal the L1 properties conserved in the expression of L2 utterances. The analysis of the L2 possessive variants provides ample evidence that Moroccan learners differ from Turkish learners in their developmental path as well as in the end state attained. We will argue that these differences are due to the different initial states of Turkish and Moroccan learners. The data also provide evidence that adult learners are able to change parametric values that relate to word-order phenomena. They seem less able, however, to acquire new morphological knowledge and language-specific lexical knowledge, which is crucial in appropriating L2 function words.

[1]  Bernd Heine,et al.  Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization , 1997 .

[2]  Mürvet Enç.  The semantics of specificity , 1991 .

[3]  Anna Szabolcsi.  Functional categories in the noun phrase , 1987 .

[4]  Einar Haugen,et al.  The analysis of linguistic borrowing. , 1950 .

[5]  Steven Abney,et al.  The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect , 1972 .

[6]  J. Kornfilt.  Remarks on headless partitives and case in Turkish , 1990 .

[7]  Müserref Dede.  Definiteness and Referentiality in Turkish Verbal Sentences , 1986 .

[8]  Robert W. Bley-Vroman.  THE COMPARATIVE FALLACY IN INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES: THE CASE OF SYSTEMATICITY1 , 1983 .

[9]  Norbert Corver,et al.  The syntax of left branch extractions , 1990 .

[10]  S. Flynn,et al.  Head-initial/head-final parameter in adult Chinese L2 acquisition of English , 1985 .

[11]  J. Rooryck,et al.  CLITIC CONSTRUCTIONS , 2000 .

[12]  Peter Broeder,et al.  Acquisition of kinship reference: A study on word-formation processes of adult language learners , 1991 .

[13]  W. F. Libby,et al.  Talking to people , 1981 .

[14]  Guglielmo Cinque,et al.  On the Evidence for Partial N-Movement in the Romance DP , 1993 .

[15]  Richard S. Kayne.  TOWARD A MODULAR THEORY OF AUXILIARY SELECTION , 1993 .

[16]  Harald Clahsen,et al.  The availability of universal grammar to adult and child learners - a study of the acquisition of German word order , 1986 .

[17]  Lydia White,et al.  Markedness and Parameter Setting: Some Implications for a Theory of Adult Second Language Acquisition , 1986 .

[18]  Richard S. Harrell,et al.  A Short Reference Grammar of Moroccan Arabic , 1962 .

[19]  Clive Perdue,et al.  Adult language acquisition : cross-linguistic perspectives , 1993 .

[20]  R. Freeze.  EXISTENTIALS AND OTHER LOCATIVES , 1992 .

[21]  Gert Webelhuth,et al.  Government and binding theory and the minimalist program : principles and parameters in syntactic theory , 1997 .

[22]  Harald Clahsen,et al.  The Seeds of Structure: A Syntactic analysis of the acquisition of Case marking , 1994 .

[23]  E. Ritter,et al.  A head-movement approach to construct-state noun phrases , 1988 .

[24]  Petra de Wit.  Genitive case and genitive constructions , 1997 .

[25]  Rex A. Sprouse,et al.  L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model , 1996 .

[26]  Pieter Muysken,et al.  THE ALTERNATION HYPOTHESIS: ACQUISITION OF DUTCH WORD ORDER BY TURKISH AND MOROCCAN FOREIGN WORKERS1 , 1981 .

[27]  Rex A. Sprouse,et al.  Word Order and Nominative Case in Non-Native Language Acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German Interlanguage , 1994 .

[28]  Gita Martohardjono,et al.  Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research , 1996, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[29]  Daniel Valois,et al.  The internal syntax of DP , 1991 .

[30]  W. Klein,et al.  The Basic Variety (or: Couldn't natural languages be much simpler?) , 1997 .

[31]  Pieter Muysken,et al.  Modeling lexical borrowability , 1994, Language Variation and Change.

[32]  Jürgen Weissenborn,et al.  Strong continuity, parameter setting and the trigger hierarchy : on the acquisition of the DP in Bernese Swiss German and High German , 1996 .