Phonology in Multilingual Grammars

Abstract

Abstract The main goal of this book is to probe questions about the nature of an interlanguage (IL) grammar (i.e. the grammar of a bilingual or multilingual). I approach these questions from a cognitive science perspective which draws upon abstract representational structures in demonstrating that phonological knowledge underlies the surface phonetic properties of L2 speech. Specifically, the book will demonstrate that IL grammars are not ‘impaired’, ‘fundamentally different’, or ‘shallow’ (as some have argued). The phonological grammars are complex, hierarchically structured mental representations that are governed by the principles of linguistic theory, including the principles of Universal Grammar. I craft a model which addresses Plato’s Problem (learning in the absence of evidence) and Orwell’s Problem (resistance to learning in the face of abundant evidence). Furthermore, the study of grammatical interfaces (phonetics/phonology; phonology/morphology; phonology/syntax) reveals the necessary design conditions for an internally consistent architecture for a comprehensive model of second language speech. The resulting empirically motivated model is parsimonious in accounting for all aspects of L2 speech from phonological feature, to segment, to word, to sentence. The book concludes with discussion of why phonology has been underrepresented in generative approaches to second language acquisition, as well as some of the implications of second language phonology for applied linguistics and language pedagogy.