Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T06:53:39.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Markedness and Second Language Acquisition

The Question of Transfer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Lydia White
Lydia White
Affiliation:
McGill University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this paper, various definitions of markedness are discussed, including the difference in the assumptions underlying psychological and linguistic approaches to markedness. It is proposed that if one adopts a definition derived from theories of language learnability, then the second language learner's prior linguistic experience may predispose him or her towards transferring marked structures from the first language to the second, contrary to usual assumptions in the literature that suggest that second language learners will avoid marked forms. To test this hypothesis, adult and child learners of French as a second language were tested using grammaticality judgment tasks on two marked structures, preposition stranding and the double object construction, which are grammatical in English but ungrammatical in French, to see if they would accept French versions of these structures. It was found that the second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in French but did accept the double object construction, suggesting that transfer takes place only with one of the two marked structures. In addition, the children took tests on these structures in their native language to see if they perceived them as in any sense psycholinguistically marked. Results show that they do not treat marked and unmarked structures differently in the native language. It is suggested that the concept of markedness may cover a range of phenomena that need to be further clarified and investigated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1987 , pp. 261 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adjémian, C., & Liceras, J. (1984). Accounting for adult acquisition of relative clauses. In Eckman, F., Bell, L., & Nelson, D. (Eds.), Universals of second language acquisition (pp. 101–118). Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Baker, C. L. (1979). Syntactic theory and the projection problem. Linguistic Inquiry, 10, 533–582.Google Scholar
Berwick, R. (1985). The acquisition of syntactic knowledge. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. (1971). On two types of models of the internalization of grammars. In Slobin, D. (Ed.), The ontogenesis of grammar (pp. 153–186). New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Brown, R., & Hanlon, C. (1970). Derivational complexity and the order of acquisition in child speech. In Hayes, J. R. (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language (pp. 11–54). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N., & Lasnik, H. (1977). Filters and control. Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 425–504.Google Scholar
Cook, V. (1976). A note on indirect objects. Journal of Child Language, 3, 435–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckman, F. (1977). Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning, 27, 315–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckman, F. (1984). Universals, typologies and interlanguage. In Rutherford, W. (Ed.), Language universals and second language acquisition (pp. 79–105). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckman, F. (1985). The markedness differential hypothesis: Theory and applications. In Wheatley, B., Hastings, A., Eckman, F., Bell, L., Krukar, G., & Rutkowski, R. (Eds.), Current approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 3–21). Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Fischer, S. (1971). The acquisition of verb-particle and dative constructions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
French, M. (1985). Markedness and the acquisition of piedpiping and preposition stranding. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, 2.1, 131–144.Google Scholar
Hornstein, N. & Weinberg, A. (1981). Case theory and preposition stranding. Linguistic Inquiry, 12, 55–91.Google Scholar
Hyltenstam, K. (1984). The use of typological markedness conditions as predictors in second language acquisition: The case of pronominal copies in relative clauses. In Andersen, R. (Ed.), Second languages: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 39–58). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1968). Child language, aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R. (1981). On certain differences between French and English. Linguistic Inquiry, 12, 349–371.Google Scholar
Kellerman, E. (1983). Now you see it, now you don't. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning (pp. 112–134). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Krause, M., & Goodluck, H. (1983). Children's interpretations of wh-question constructions. In Otsu, Y., van Riemsdijk, H., Inoue, K., Kamio, A., & Kawasaki, N. (Eds.), Studies in generative grammar and language acquisition (pp. 119–128). Tokyo: International Christian University.Google Scholar
Liceras, J. (1983). Markedness, contrastive analysis and the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto.Google Scholar
Liceras, J. (1985). The role of intake in the determination of learners' competence. In Gass, S. & Madden, C. (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 354–373). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Mazurkewich, I. (1984). The acquisition of the dative alternation by second language learners and linguistic theory. Language Learning, 34, 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazurkewich, I. (1985). Syntactic markedness and language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7, 15–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otsu, Y. (1981). Universal grammar and syntactic development in children: Toward a theory of syntactic development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language leamability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Roeper, T., Lapointe, S., Bing, J., & Tavakolian, S. (1981). A lexical approach to language acquisition. In Tavakolian, S. (Ed.), Language acquisition and linguistic theory (pp. 35–58). Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Rutherford, W. (1982). Markedness in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 32, 85–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selinker, L., Swain, M., & Dumas, G. (1975). The interlanguage hypothesis extended to children. Language Learning, 25, 139–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stowell, T. (1981). Origins of phrase structure. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Tarallo, F., & Myhill, J. (1983). Interference and natural language processing in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 33, 55–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Buren, P., & Sharwood, Smith M. (1985). The acquisition of preposition stranding by second language learners and parametric variation. Second Language Research, 1, 18–46.Google Scholar
Van Riemsdijk, H. (1978). A case study in syntactic markedness. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris.Google Scholar
Vinet, M-T. (1979). Dialect variation and a restrictive theory of grammar: A study of intransitive prepositions in a variety of French. Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics, 13, 107–125.Google Scholar
White, L. (in press). Overgeneralization of the English dative alternation in child language. In Nelson, K. & Van Kleeck, A. (Eds.), Children's language, 6. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1983). Markedness and the projection problem. Language Learning, 33, 293–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar