Think of a number: conceptual transfer in the second language acquisition of English plural-marking

Abstract

Dao (2007) found that Vietnamese learners of English produced numeric plurals (e.g. five books) before lexical plurals (e.g. books). Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998; 2005; 2007) predicts the reverse order, assuming that agreement requires a process of unification which involves the storage of information, while production of a single word does not. Using a model of lexical access, Weaver++ (Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer 1999) we show how (i) agreement can result from co-activation where two words simply respond to the same concept, so no information storage is involved and (ii) the production of numeric plurals is facilitated for Vietnamese learners by conceptual transfer (Jarvis 2011): in Vietnamese there is a chain of conceptual links between plurality, numerals, classifiers, and nouns, but no direct link between plurality and nouns, so numerals facilitate the use of nouns for Vietnamese learners, but they must acquire a direct link between nouns and plurality.