English Adjectives and Estonian Nouns: Looking for Agreement?

Helin Kask,Daria Bahtina,Anna Verschik

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735232

Helin Kask, Daria Bahtina + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735232

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Abstract

This study investigated how speakers of Estonian as L1 with varying degree of proficiency in English judge grammaticality of bilingual constructions English adjective + Estonian noun from the point of view of adjective agreement. Estonian is rich in inflectional morphology, and adjectives agree with nouns in case and number. The empirical evidence from English-Estonian bilingual speech shows that agreement is not always the case even when an English adjective fits into Estonian declension system. It is hypothesized that the higher proficiency in/exposure to English is, the higher is the acceptability of bilingual adjective phrases, and (non-)agreement does not play a role. To test this, an experiment was designed where the test corpus of 108 sentences consisted of real and constructed examples, both in agreement and non-agreement condition. Real sentences came from fashion and beauty blogs and vlogs. The test was administered online and the participants were asked to rate adjective acceptability. The hypothesis was confirmed: increased proficiency in English, together with younger age, had a positive correlation with acceptability of all adjective types, independent of adjective (non-)agreement. Residence and birthplace had a small effect on acceptability of some adjective types. Whether sentences were real or constructed, had only a minor effect. Male participants tended to assess real sentences lower, probably because of the topics typical for female blogs. Monosyllabic consonant-ending adjectives were exceptional, as their assessment did not depend on any factor. All in all, the study demonstrated that grammaticality judgment among the native speakers of the same L1 differs because of different degrees of bilingualism, and structural factors, such as compatibility with Estonian declension system, are not decisive. Thus, it is not clear what an ideal native speaker is.

Highlights

The interest toward how a non-native speaker differs from a native speaker and whether native(-like) competence can be achieved is explicitly stated in the context of SLA/bilingualism/multilingualism research with the focus on languages that are acquired later than L1 (i.e., L2 etc.)
Our research questions are as follows: (1) Whether there is a difference in grammaticality judgement depending on proficiency in and exposure to English; (2) whether there is a difference in perception of real and constructed examples; (3) whether there is a difference in perception of the group of English adjectives that fit into Estonian
When A Kendall’s tau-b correlation was run to compare the two factors—age and English—only a moderate correlation was established (τ b = 0.26, p < 0.01), which verified that the two factors can be used interchangeably only in about a quarter of the data, which means that age and English still affected the outcome separately

Summary

Introduction

The interest toward how a non-native speaker differs from a native speaker and whether native(-like) competence can be achieved is explicitly stated in the context of SLA/bilingualism/multilingualism research with the focus on languages that are acquired later than L1 (i.e., L2 etc.). Multilinguals have several linguistic systems in their mind, which renders their cognition and perception different from those of monolinguals who have only one linguistic system The latter are unable to juxtapose and draw parallels between the systems. It implies, among other things, that focusing on a particular LX without considering all other languages of a given individual gives a rather patchy picture. Among other things, that focusing on a particular LX without considering all other languages of a given individual gives a rather patchy picture Important as this may be, the debate on native competence is centered around languages acquired later than L1, such as SLA, language pedagogy, teachers who are or are not native speakers of the language they teach and so on

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