CLL Session 2:

Theoretical issues in SLA research

LAEL, Lancaster University

Florencia Franceschina

Learnability
How is it possible for humans (but not animals
or machines) to learn to understand and
produce sentences of the language(s) they are
exposed to?

Approaches to learnability

Interactionist/sociocultural models
e.g., Schumanns (1978) Acculturation/Pidginization
Hypothesis
Cognitive models
e.g., Bates and MacWhinneys (1985, 1989)
Competition Model
UG-based models
e.g., White (1989, 2003), Flynn et al. (1998), Schwartz
(1998), Archibald (2000), Herschensson (2000),
Balcom (2001), Hawkins (2001)

Evidence for UG in FLA

FLA is:
Quick
Effortless
Uniform across stages of acquisition
Robust in terms of noisy/variable input
It shows equipotentiality across learners

Evidence for UG in FLA

Poverty of the Stimulus (PoS):
our linguistic knowledge is underdetermined by
the input
Example 1: Structure Dependence Principle
Example 2: OPC

Structure Dependence Principle

This is my cat

Is this my cat?

Paws has drunk his milk

Has Paws drunk his milk?

My cat is the best

Cat my is the best?

Overt Pronoun Constraint

(1) John believes [that he is intelligent] English Japanese

(2) John believes [that _ is intelligent]
English Japanese

Montalbetti (1984)
Kanno (1997)

Overt Pronoun Constraint

Japanese
(1) Johni believes [that hei/j is intelligent]
(2) Johni believes [that _i/j is intelligent]
(3) Everyonei believes [that theyj are intelligent]
(4) Everyonei believes [that _i/j are intelligent]

OPC

UG, principles and parameters

The aspects of I-language which are common
to all of us are known as UG, and the theory of
UG will state the commonalities that hold
across all possible languages (often called
principles of UG) and in what ways individual Ilanguages may diverge from these
commonalities (known as parameters of
variation of UG or just parameters).
Adger (2003: 16)

Evidence for UG in SLA?

Target-like outcomes are the norm in FLA
Vs.
Non-target-like outcomes are typical in SLA

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 1: No access to UG
Clahsen and Muysken (1986)
Schachter (1988)
Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1990)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 2: Full access to UG
Flynn (1987)
Epstein, Flynn and Martohardjono (1996)
Scharwtz and Sprouse (1996)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

Account 3: Partial access to UG
Smith and Tsimpli (1995)

Accounts of divergent outcomes

More recent proposals:
Account 2:
Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH, Prevost
and White, 2001)
Account 3:
Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH,
Hawkins and Chan, 1997)

A case study: Patty

(Lardiere, 1998a, b)
1.
2.

Which of the two recent accounts is supported

by the data?
What other information about Pattys L2
knowledge would be useful to help us reach a
definite conclusion?

The initial state

Account 1:
Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA, Schwartz and
Sprouse, 1994, 1996)
Account 2:
Minimal Trees (Vainikka and Young-Scholten,
1994, 1996)

From theory to data

Exercise

Reading

Mitchell, R. and F. Myles 1998: Second language

learning theories. London: Arnold.
Hawkins, R. 2001: Second language syntax. A
generative introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. (Chapter 8)
White, L. 2003: Second language acquisition and
Universal Grammar. (2nd edition) Cambridge: CUP.
(Chapter 2)