universal grammar.doc

山 东 大 学应用语言学论文题目 The Role of UG in the Interlanguage Grammar 学院 外国语学院 专业名称 英语语言文学 研究生姓名 雷扬 学号 200910956 2011年2月ContentsAbstract31.Introduction32.Debate over the Availability of UG42.1 No Access to UG42.2 Full Access to UG52.3 Indirect Access to UG via L153. Evaluation of Former Studies64. Partial Access to UG84.1 Subjacency Principle94.2 Null Subject Parameter94.3 Argument Structure104.4 Language Features114.5 Comprehensive Theory135.Conclusion13References14Abstract This paper discusses the availability of Universal Grammar in Second language acquisition. A number of theoretical positions concerning the issue are introduced and examined. The position of no access to UG, full access to UG and indirect access to UG via L1 are illustrated with related empirical studies. The problems in those hypotheses are raised to show that their findings are not completely reliable. In the end, through discussing several representative areas of UG, we come to the comprehensive theory that L2 learners have partial access to UG where learners may access to UG parameters that are operating in their L1 and reset parameters not tapped by L1. UG and cognitive mechanism are seen as interacting with each other, with UG initiating the acquisition and also encompassing the cognitive process.Key words: Universal Grammar; access to UG; second language acquisition; general learning strategies.1. IntroductionSince the development of Universal Grammar in modern linguistics by theorists such as Noam Chomsky in the 1950s, it has been widely adopted to account for language acquisition. Universal Grammar is a set of abstract rules that govern the functioning of all languages, which is not specific to one certain language. It offers a way to answer the logical problem of language acquisition, that is, the final achievements of language learners are far more complex and advanced than the limited input, and it is also true in second language acquisition. So a question has arisen that “does UG still play a role in SLA and control its learning process by innate linguistic principles?” In this paper, a number of theoretical positions concerning accessibility to UG in L2 acquisition will be introduced and examined. It will be argued that L2 learners have partial access to UG where learners may access to those UG parameters that are operating in their L1 as well as the parameters that they cannot retrieve back to L1 with the help of general learning strategies.2. Debate over the Availability of UG2.1 No Access to UGOn one side of the debate are researchers who claim that UG cannot shape L2 acquisition. Critical Period hypothesis argues that after puberty first language learners cannot draw on an innate language acquisition device. If UG is constrained by critical period, L2 learners cannot access to it beyond a certain age level. Perhaps the most convincing evidence for this position is the common phenomenon that immigrant children always become native-like speakers while their parents rarely do, because they have already lost the chance of accessing to UG. In 1989, Johnson and Newport conducted an influential study on a group of L1 speakers of Chinese or Korean using a grammaticality judgment task. The results suggested a correlation between age of arrival in the United States and the native-like judgments on a wide variety of structures of English grammar. Immigrants immersed in a second language before the age of 7 were able to achieve native fluency in the language, however, after that age performance was low. Therefore, students who are over 7 years old could no longer draw upon the innate language learning mechanism. Studies supporting no access position tend to focus on the fundamental differences between L1 and L2 acquisition, and the ultimate attainments of the acquisition process. Bley-Vroman (1989) established Fundamental Difference Hypothesis in which he listed nine significant differences between adult language learning and child language learning. Normal children inevitably achieve perfect mastery of the language, while adult foreign language learners do not. He holds the position that adult language learning is rather a problem solving process than a natural language learning development. Schachter (1989) studied L2 adult native speakers of Korean with respect to wh-movement and subjacency. Subjacency is not observed in the syntax of Korean, so subjects have no exposure to it in their L1. Data were collected from grammaticality judgment on subjacency violations. Schachter found that native Korean speakers failed to reject subjacency violations and appeared to be operating at chance, which supports claims of the unavailability of UG.2.2 Full Access to UGAnother possibility is that UG continues to regulate L2 learning as it does in first language acquisition, and L2 acquisition is considered to be an interaction between UG and L2 input. Flynn (1996) adopts this position, claiming that there is no such thing as Critical Period, after which UG ceases to operate. She goes on to review a range of empirical studies, and one of them is a research about Japanese learners of English. In the research, Japanese participants can successfully reset the head-direction parameter from head-final to head-initial. Another aspect of evidence comes from impossible errors, that is, interlanguage grammar does not violate invariant linguistic principles. Thomas (1991) supports the proposal of full access to UG by investigating the interpretation of English reflexive pronouns by native speakers of Japanese and Spanish. The distribution of anaphors is subject to the Binding Theory, which linguists cite as knowledge of language attributed to UG. L2 Learners did not receive explicit instruction about the rules governing anaphors in their previous study, so they interpreted anaphors in accordance with legitimate parameter setting of UG. The results showed that most learners of English bound reflexive to local antecedent, which is the correct parameter setting in English, or to either local or long-distance antecedent, which is incorrect in English but possible grammar of anaphora. Hence, adult language learners did consult principles and parameter of UG in determining the referential properties of anaphors in L2, and they seemed able to reset parameters in L2.2.3 Indirect Access to UG via L1The biggest difference between L1 and L2 language learning is that L2 learners already have a fully developed language system of their own. Thus, it is possible that they obey a principle of UG in L2 not because they have access to it but because the only language they know conforms to this principle. Cook (1988) refers to this process as indirect access: UG is available to L2 learners only limited to the presence of UG in their L1. The principles applied to L1 and parameters already set to L1 are the basis for L2 learning. Lee (1992) also conducted a research on the Binding Theory on a group of Korean learners of English of different ages. It was interesting to find that the youngest subjects and the adults had not acquired the English setting for binding parameter, whereas the older children succeeded in doing so. The finding suggests that L2 learners are easier to access the principles and parameters that have already been activated in their native language.3. Evaluation of Former StudiesThe researches mentioned above are only a small part in the whole area of Universal Grammar and SLA, and they have provided valuable evidences for the presence or absence of UG in the interlanguage grammar. However, when we look deeper into those researches and relate the findings to other further studies, those results tend to be less reliable.In the position of no Access to UG, subjects poor performance in native-like judgment on subjacency violations seems to be the most frequently quoted supporting study. Nevertheless, the simple judgment as right or wrong is too absolute and rigid in this case. Martohardjono (1993) differentiates various types and levels of constrains on wh-movement in her study. It is explained that violation leads to weak ungrammaticality if the extraction is from argument positions, like: a.Which car did John spread the rumor that the neighbor stole? (movement out of a noun complex complement)Whereas, violations resulting from extraction from non-argument positions will lead to strong ungrammaticality, for example:b.Which soup did the man leave the table after the waiter spilled? (movement out of an adjunct) Although L2 speakers could not make absolutely correct judgment on subjacency violations, they displayed target-like intuitions about the relative strength of ungrammaticality deriving from their knowledge of UG principles. Significant distinctions between strong and weak violations were made by L1 speaker of Chinese, Indonesian and Italian, while only Italian speakers made native-like judgments. It is safe to say that UG still functions in interlanguage grammar, and non-native performance may due to limited amount of time and input to construct target-like lexicon and grammatical structure.For those who insist on full access to UG, it is assumed that full target language competence is possible and that there is no such thing as critical period. However, in reality, completely native-like L2 speakers hardly exist when they expose to the target language over a certain age, and they do employ general learning strategies in foreign language acquisition. Even if principles like the Binding Theory do not exist in learners L1, no explicit instruction does not necessarily lead to consultation with UG, instead, language learning could derive from information processing and cognitive learning capacities. In an early study, Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1978) grouped 98 English speakers of L2 Dutch by age. All of them had just arrived in the Netherlands and were acquiring Dutch naturally. After three months of residence, the two older groups outperformed the younger children on grammatical measures, but overtime the difference between the youngest learners and the others decreased, with the younger learners catching up quickly. The older learners apparently possessed more learning strategies and experience than children, so they performed better in the beginning. Nevertheless, as time went by, older learners got stuck and met difficulties, like fossilization and negative L1 transfer, because they were far from critical period. While younger learners still benefited from their golden time during which language acquisition is always easy and complete. The study provides evidences for the existence of critical period and general learning strategies in SLA and has shaken the credibility of the position of full access to UG. Proponents of indirect access to UG claim that learners only have access to UG through their L1. In fact, considering above discussions we have already overturned such statement. In Lees research, the oldest and the youngest had not acquired the binding parameter, but the reason might be the subjects were too young to master the general learning strategies and too old to benefit from the critical period. Moreover, if L2 learner can only access to UG through L1, there are no ways for them to make use of the principles that are not available in the L1. In Martohardjonos study, participants still made significant distinction between strong and week violations despite no such rules in their L1, displaying the functioning of UG in interlanguage grammar. Furthermore, there is experimental evidence for parameter-resetting in L2 in the above discussion, such as the successful head-direction parameter resetting of Japanese learners from head-final to head-initial.Even though there are unconvincing parts in those hypotheses concerning the role of UG in the interlanguage grammar, they are all significant researches in this area. They inspired the partial access hypothesis which the author is in favor of.4. Partial Access to UGIn this position, it is believed that UG is available to L2 acquisition, but it works in a different pattern to L1 acquisition. Apart from assuming the L1 value of UG parameters, L2 learners may still access to and reset parameters not tapped by L1. Factors like age and native language can block this process and prevent L2 learners from drawing on UG, but general learning strategies will activate UG in some cases to explore other resources made available by UG.Felix (1985) puts forward a dual access hypothesis, in which he believes adults still have access to UG as well as make use of a general problem solving module. He proceeds to use this dual access theory to account for the failure to achieve native-like competence of L2 learners. According to him, the problem solving system is a fundamentally inadequate tool to process structures beyond a certain elementary level, and learners are able to draw on the two distinct and autonomous cognitive systems to form hypothesis about abstract linguistic information. The access to UG may be partially blocked or facilitated by the use of general learning strategies.In the following sections the discussion will be focused on the empirical studies addressing several representative areas of UG, such as Subjacency Principle, Null Subject Parameter, Argument Structure and Functional Features.4.1 Subjacency PrincipleUziel (1993) investigated whether L2 learners have greater difficulty with extraction from complex subjects than with object extraction. The results support the hypothesis that subject-extraction would be rejected at a higher rate than object-extraction because the former violates two principles. Thus, the involvement of UG helps to explain why some syntactic structures are more acceptable to learners. Li (1998) studied two groups of Chinese learners of English, students who had spent time the the US (US-based group) and those who had not (China-based group). Grammaticality judgment task and interpretation task were used to test whether subjects could distinguish strong and weak subjacency violation. It turned out that there were differences between the two groups with the former more native-like, but they all rejected strong violations to a greater extent that weak violation.Those studies provide clear evidence for the involvement of UG in L2 learning, but L2 learners performed far from being native, which could be the result of blocked learning process by general cognitive strategies.4.2 Null Subject ParameterThe Null Subject Parameter determines whether the subject of a clause can be omitted. There are two settings for this parameter, -null-subject language, like English and +null-subject language, like Spanish. This parameter is also associated with a number of other linguistic features, such as verb-subject word order and morphological uniformity. In 1986, White made a study on Spanish, French and Italian learners of English, in which subjects were asked to judge a group of English sentences with pronoun subjects missing, ungrammatical subject-verb inversion or with a that trace. It turned out that Spanish learners were more likely to produce a that trace in wh-questions, which was influenced by L1 parameter setting. However, as proficiency level increased, other participants switched to the L2 setting, representing by enhanced accuracy level of the learners judgments. The results show that L2 learners do not directly interact with L2 input, instead, they transfer the L1 setting in the first place, and reset the parameter to the new L2 value given sufficient time and learning activities. Hilles (1991) made a series of studies on the use of pronominal subjects and verb inflection. The research collected longitudinal learner language data of a Colombian learner, Jorge and other 5 subjects. Jorge began with the L1 setting and subsequently switched to the L2 setting and this switch co-occurred with the emergence of the auxiliary. Three of the learners showed a strong correlation between the emergence of pronominal subjects and verb inflection, suggesting UG-guided acquisition. Hilles argues that learners begin with null subjects and uniformly uninflected verbs, and subsequently switch to pronominal subjects once they realize that English is not uniform in verb inflection.All these studies have shown that L2 acquisition is UG-controlled and parameter-resetting can be achieved through efforts.4.3 Argument Structure Argument structure refers to the information encoded in the lexical entities of verbs, determining the thematic roles they can take. For example, the verb pass allows for an agentive role, a goal and an object, like: c. John passed Henry the book. Agent Goal ObjectPass also allows an alternation:d. John passed the book to Henry. Agent Object GoalHowever, not every verb allows such alternation. In this case, there is a potential danger of overgeneralization that two kinds of verbs have similar argument structure. Researchers argue that there could be some kind of constraint to prevent the occurrence of such errors. Mazurkewich (1984) hypothesizes that the NP+PP pattern, like object+goal, is unmarked and the NP+NP pattern, like goal+object, is marked, because the former is more productive than the latter since almost all dative verbs take NP+PP complements while only some take NP+NP pattern, and the case assignment is more transparent in the NP+PP pattern. Therefore, NP+PP complement should be easier to be acquired than NP+NP rule. She studied 45 French-speaking high school and college students and 38 Inuktitut-speaking High school students. In the test, both the French and the Inuktitut speakers judged the sentences with the unmarked NP+PP