Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis Research Articles

Prediction in bilingual sentence processing

Abstract The Unified Competition Model (MacWhinney, 2012) accounts for cross-linguistic differences in thematic role mapping. We investigated production and predictive use of accusative case morphology in Russian-Hebrew bilingual children. We also investigated the role of production in predictive processing testing the Prediction-by-Production Account (Pickering & Garrod, 2018) vs. the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White, 2000). Three groups of children aged 4–8 participated: Russian-Hebrew-speaking bilinguals, Russian-speaking and Hebrew-speaking monolingual controls. All children participated in the accusative case production and Visual-World eye-tracking comprehension experiments. Bilinguals were tested in both of their languages. The results of the study confirmed the predictions of the Unified Competition Model showing typological differences in the strength of the case-marking cue and its predictive use in sentence processing in Russian- and Hebrew-speaking controls. While Russian-speaking monolinguals relied on case marking to predict the upcoming agent/patient, the performance of Hebrew-speaking monolingual children varied. The findings for bilinguals showed that despite their lower production accuracy in both languages, they were either indistinguishable from monolinguals or showed an advantage in the predictive use of case morphology. The findings support the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, which predicts a dissociation between production and comprehension.

Identifying agents of change: Simplification of possessive marking in Abui-Malay bilinguals

This paper investigates variation in possessive marking in Abui, a language spoken in a minority bilingual community in eastern Indonesia. Abui youngsters grow up acquiring both Abui (Papuan) and Alor Malay (Austronesian), but only become active speakers of Abui when they reach adolescence. Due to this delay, their Abui is expected to show signs of both imperfect acquisition and contact-induced effects. This language background makes them an interesting population on which to carry out a cross-sectional study on contact-induced variation. Abui distinguishes between a reflexive and non-reflexive possessive marker, while Alor Malay makes no such distinction. Combining methods from descriptive linguistics, bilingualism research, and variationist sociolinguistics, and using both a production and a comprehension task, we study the variation between four age-groups of Abui-Malay bilinguals: (pre-)adolescents, young adults, adults, and elders. Our results reveal that (pre-)adolescent males are the drivers of variation, and generalize the non-reflexive possessive marker to reflexive environments. This suggests that over the next decades the reflexive possessive prefix may be lost in Abui. This paper is a direct answer to a call by Ross (2013) to conduct in-depth variationist studies to establish more synchronically informed approaches to the study of language contact. In addition, by combining production and comprehension studies and applying them to an indigenous minority language, it expands the empirical support for a prominent hypothesis of bilingual processing: the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White 2000b).

The Acquisition of the Third Person Singular [-s]: A Case Study of Language-minority Children Attending an Irish Primary School

This study investigates the development of the third-person singular (3SG)[-s] morpheme in the spontaneous speech of five language minority children attending an Irish primary school, where the language of instruction is the second language (L2) of the subjects. Evidence from the study is discussed in the context of a number of theories which have been put forward in the literature to account for the development of the 3SG. Results support some of the predictions of the Optional Infinitive Theory, and would argue in favour of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. The parallel use of both finite and non-finite verbs in obligatory finite contexts is explored, and while the sporadic omission of the 3SG morpheme is similar to the sporadic omission of the genitive [-s] morpheme, the use of objective case marking ceasing in verbal projections yet continuing in nominal projections, questions the extent to which a parallel occurs between possessive and 3SG inflections.

Assessing the so called Marked Inflectional Features of the Nigerian English: a Second Language Acquisition Theory Account

There are conflicting claims among scholars on whether the structural outputs of the types of English spoken in countries where English is used as a second language gives such speech forms the status of varieties of English. This study examined those morphological features considered to be marked features of the variety spoken in Nigeria according to Kirkpatrick (2011) and the variety spoken in Malaysia by considering the claims of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) a Second Language Acquisition theory which accounts for the cause of the variable use of such inflections among L2 learners. Results from oral and written composition tasks administered on selected undergraduate students of Nigerian and Malaysian universities revealed that what is regarded as morphological features are actually a deviation from the L2 target forms. According to the MSIH the variability in the use of such inflections is due to problems of lexical retrieval a psycholinguistic problem which manifests among L2 learners of English generally which results in wrong surface representations.

A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Questions in German and French Adult Second Language Acquisition

Several studies have been conducted to try and understand and explain the morphological and syntactic aspects of adult second language acquisition (SLA). Two prominent hypotheses that have been put forward concerning late L2 speakers' knowledge of inflectional morphology and of related functional categories and their feature values are the Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). The cross-linguistic comparison of the acquisition of questions in German and French provided in this study offers a new perspective to differences and similarities between first language acquisition (FLA) and adult SLA. Comparing a Germanic and a Romance L2, differing not only in their overall linguistic properties (such as i. e. OV/VO, V2, clitics), but explicitly in the formation and regularities of questions, we present striking similarities in adult SLA, and irrespective of the first and the second languages and of instructed versus non-instructed learning. The investigation of the adult SLA of morphological and structural aspects of questions in French and German strengthens the assumption that the acquisition of morphology and syntax is connected in French and German FLA but is disentangled in adult SLA. Our data reveal variability of question syntax, and with the syntactic position of the verb in particular. Instead of discovering the correct position of the verb at a certain stage of acquisition which can be accounted for by parameter setting in FLA, the adult learners gradually approach the target word order but still exhibit a great deal of variation after several years of exposure to the L2. The findings provided here contradict the predictions of the MSIH (Prévost/White 2000; Ionin/Wexler 2002; among others), for not only morphological features, but syntactic finiteness of finiteness are problematic in adult SLA, and that the Impairment Representation Hypothesis (IRH) (Beck 1998; Eubank 1993/1994; among others) accounts for these differences in first and second language acquisition. IRH and FDH mirror our findings, by predicting the use of (domain-general) strategies instead of agreement or feature checking mechanisms.

Assessing the role of current andcumulativeexposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender

This paper investigates the role of amount of current andcumulativeexposure in bilingual development and ultimate attainment by exploring the extent to which simultaneous bilingual children's knowledge of grammatical gender is affected by current and previous amount of exposure, including in the early years. Elicited production and grammaticality judgement data collected from 136 English–Dutch-speaking bilingual children aged between three and 17 years are used to examine the lexical and grammatical aspects of Dutch gender, viz. definite determiners and adjectival inflection. It is argued that the results are more consistent with a rule-based than a piecemeal approach to acquisition (Blom, Polišenskà & Weerman, 2008a; Gathercole & Thomas, 2005, 2009), and that non-target performance on the production task can be explained by the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997; Prévost & White, 2000; Weerman, Duijnmeijer & Orgassa, 2011).

Evidence of V to I raising in L2 Spanish

This article focuses on the acquisition of verb placement (adverb placement, subject–verb inversion in yes/no questions, subject–verb inversion in direct, indirect and pseudo wh-questions) in L2 Spanish. Four different elicitation tasks (an identification task, a grammaticality judgment task, a preference grammaticality task and a production task) were used for data collection. The subjects were 41 English adult L2 learners of Spanish at different proficiency levels (beginners, low intermediate, intermediate and advanced) according to an independent placement test. In line with Lardiere’s (1998a, 1998b, 2000) and Prévost and White’s (2000) findings, evidence for developments in syntax which is independent of developments in morphology is found in support of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. Although L2 learners’ verb-placement is target like at the surface level, their knowledge of verb agreement is poor and limited. That is, L2 learners appear to have reset the verb movement parameter in Spanish (i.e., [+movement]), even though they fail to morphologically mark the verb for person and number correctly, showing lack of knowledge that the inflections in Spanish I are strong. These findings suggest that there is a strong dissociation between syntax and morphology (Lardiere, 2000), but they will also be discussed in the light of some current theories on the acquisition of new values for uninterpretable syntactical features (Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).

The Acquisition of English be Auxiliary and Thematic Verb Constructions by Adult Arab ESL Learners

This study investigates the acquisition of English be auxiliary and thematic verb constructions in non-past contexts by adult Arab learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). It is well known that second language (L2) learners show variability in the L2 production of verbal inflectional morphology by either omitting inflections or marking inappropriate substitution of one kind of inflection for another. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Prévost and White, 2000) proposes that L2 learners have knowledge of functional categories and features underlying tense and agreement although sometimes they fail to produce the corresponding overt forms. In order to examine the nature of the adult Arab ESL learners’ interlanguage (IL) grammar at the L2 ultimate attainment level as well as the extent to which the learners can acquire English be auxiliary and thematic verb constructions in non-past contexts, an oral production task (ORPT) was conducted with 77 adult Arab ESL learners subdivided into three proficiency levels (lower-intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced). An analysis of the ORPT show that the L2 learners omit and wrongly use the be auxiliary verbal inflection (am, is, are) more frequently than the thematic verb inflection (-s) in their production. The results reveal that the adult Arab ESL learners, even at ultimate attainment level, are more sensitive to the thematic verb contractions than to the be auxiliary constructions. These results suggest that variability in the production of verbal inflectional morphology is due to problems with the realization of surface morphology in accordance with the MSIH.

MORPHOLOGICAL ERRORS IN SPANISH SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS AND HERITAGE SPEAKERS

Morphological variability and the source of these errors have been intensely debated in SLA. A recurrent finding is that postpuberty second language (L2) learners often omit or use the wrong affix for nominal and verbal inflections in oral production but less so in written tasks. According to the missing surface inflection hypothesis, L2 learners have intact functional projections, but errors stem from problems during production only (a mapping or processing deficit). This article shows that morphological variability is also characteristic of heritage speakers (early bilinguals of ethnic minority languages) who were exposed to the family language naturalistically in early childhood but failed to acquire age-appropriate linguistic competence in the language. However, because errors in heritage speakers are more frequent in written than in oral tasks, the missing surface inflection hypothesis does not apply to them. The discussion considers how morphological errors in the two populations seem to be related to the type of experience.

The Acquisition of the Simple Past Tense by First-form Pupils in an English Immersion Programme

Learners of English as a second language frequently make mistakes in their use of the L2. Prévost & White (2000) report that the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) suggests that learners know the underlying functional category, but cannot always produce the correct surface form. The present study aims to test this hypothesis by investigating the development of the simple past tense of pupils in bilingual (TTO) and regular secondary education. Therefore, first-form pupils of bilingual and regular Α-level were investigated. The children performed two writing assignments: one at the start of the year and another one four months later (just after the Christmas holidays). The TTO-pupils showed more progress in their acquisition of past tense forms of English as compared to regular Α-level pupils and they were more creative in their language use, as was visible in the mistakes they made. Furthermore, no pupil used only non-finite forms. Thus, the findings indicate that the MSIH appears to be correct.

The acquisition of tense in English: Distinguishing child second language from first language and specific language impairment

This study reports on a comparison of the use and knowledge of tense-marking morphemes in English by first language (L1), second language (L2) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. The objective of our research was to ascertain whether the L2 children's tense acquisition patterns were similar or dissimilar to those of the L1 and SLI groups, and whether they would fit an (Extended) Optional Infinitive profile, or an L2-based profile, e.g., the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. Results showed that the L2 children had a unique profile compared with their monolingual peers, which was better characterized by the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. At the same time, results reinforce the assumption underlying the (Extended) Optional Infinitive profile that internal constraints on the acquisition of tense could be a component of L1 development, with and without SLI.

Defective adjectival inflection in non-native German: Prosodic transfer or missing surface inflection?

Two recent hypotheses which support the theory of full access to Universal Grammar have been proposed in order to account for variant data supplied by L2 learners. The Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (Goad, White & Steele 2003) suggests that non-target-like behaviour by L2 learners is partially due to the differences in prosody between the L1 and L2 and the ensuing prosodic constraints; whilst the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White 2000) proposes that problems are due to the learners’ variability in mapping abstract syntactic features onto morphological forms. This paper discusses a study of Japanese native speakers acquiring L3 German adjectival inflection in light of these two hypotheses. Data are provided from a written gap-filling task and from two oral production tasks. The results indicate stronger support for the MSIH.

Variability in second language article production: beyond the representational deficit vs. processing constraints debate

This article addresses the debate on the causes of variability in production of second language functional morphology. It reports a study on article production by first language (L1) Serbian / second language (L2) English learners and compares their behaviour to that of a Turkish learner of English, reported in Goad and White (2004). In particular, it focuses on the tendency of these learners to omit articles more in adjectivally pre-modified (Art + Adj + N) than in non-modified contexts (Art + N). The asymmetry is found in both spoken and written production. The article argues that the pattern of results is not consistent with models assuming target-like syntax: the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis cannot predict the asymmetry at all, and the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis cannot extend its explanatory power to spoken production of L1 Serbian/L2 English learners, or to written production in general. An alternative account, with broader empirical coverage, is proposed, on which L2 learners whose L1s do not grammaticalize definiteness misanalyse English articles as nominal modifiers, and treat them in production as such. The model goes beyond the representational deficit vs. processing constraints debate, in that it suggests that variability is caused by processing limitations, but precisely because the production of misanalysed elements cannot be (directly) syntactically motivated, and has to rely on general cognition instead.

The Acquisition of Null Prep Constructions and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

The Acquisition of Null Prep Constructions and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

The acquisition of functional categories in early French second language grammars: the use of finite and non-finite verbs in negative contexts

This cross-sectional study of first language (L1) English adolescents learning French as a second language (L2) uses their development of negatives in relation to finite and non-finite verbs to investigate the status and nature of functional categories in these learners’ emerging grammars. Analysing oral data from elicited production tasks from instructed learners, it provides evidence for a lack of functional categories in the Initial State and the earliest L2 grammars (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1996; Hawkins, 2001). However, the results from the study also indicate that the functional category I (or T) then emerges reasonably rapidly. The pattern of development of negation and finite and non-finite verbs in these learners’ grammars also suggests that feature values are in place for the functional categories once they are projected, as learners consistently raise the verb. The learners do use root infinitives but the properties of these root infinitives differ to those found in L1 acquisition (Pierce, 1992; Wexler, 1994; 1998), thus supporting Wexler’s maturational account of Optional Infinitives in L1 acquisition. Additionally, the rare occurrence of raised non-finite verbs would indicate that there is a problem with the realization of surface morphology in accordance with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis of Prévost and White (2000a) rather than an impairment in the grammar (Meisel, 1997; Hawkins, 2000).

Tense and agreement markers in the interlanguage of Spanish learners of English

This paper presents an analysis of the learning process of the features of tense and agreement in the interlanguage system of L1 Spanish speakers learning L2 English. This study uses a statistically significant sample of the student population in year 6 of primary education (11-12 years old), year 4 of secondary education (15-16 years old) and upper sixth form (17-18 years old), in the Autonomous Region of the Canary Islands. The research instrument was their written production. The analysis conducted includes the bound morphemes -ed and -s and the free morpheme be (with both copular and auxiliary function). The results show a predominant omission for the agreement morpheme -s in the three groups in which the corpus has been divided. On the other hand, the bound morpheme -ed and the free morpheme be present the highest percentage of correct use. These results confirm the capacity of the subjects to learn the verb features of tense and agreement, thus supporting the arguments of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost and White, 2000). As the results for the bound morphemes are not in agreement, the influence of other factors on the good results of the bound morpheme –ed, such as the verb aspect or the absence of phonological realizations, is suggested.

TRUNCATION AND MISSING INFLECTION IN INITIAL CHILD L2 GERMAN

This paper examines the nature of finite and nonfinite main declarative sentences produced by L2 child learners. It claims that two of the main proposals on the root infinitive (RI) phenomenon, the Truncation Hypothesis (TH) and the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH), are not mutually exclusive in child SLA because they are hypotheses on completely different issues. According to the TH, different roots are involved: RIs are VPs underlyingly, whereas finite clauses are IPs or CPs. The MSIH claims that L2 learners have difficulties using the exact inflectional morphology, which leads them to produce verbs with an infinitival marker or no inflection at all. These so-called default forms are finite. In principle, then, an L2 learner could project truncated structure and produce default finite forms at the same time. This possibility is investigated in longitudinal data from an English-speaking child learning German. Two complementary sets of data can be accounted for by the hypotheses. Verbs bearing a nonfinite marker are restricted to nonfinite positions, which is consistent with the TH. Bare (uninflected) forms occur in the same (finite) positions as verbs inflected for person and number, which suggests that they are finite. This finding is consistent with the MSIH.

Why is ‘is’ easier than ‘-s’?: acquisition of tense/agreement morphology by child second language learners of English

This study of first-language (L1) Russian children acquiring English as a second language (L2) investigates the reasons behind omission of verbal inflection in L2 acquisition and argues for presence of functional categories in L2 grammar. Analyses of spontaneous production data show that the child L2 learners ( n = 20), while omitting inflection, almost never produce incorrect tense/agreement morphology. Furthermore, the L2 learners use suppletive inflection at a significantly higher rate than affixal inflection, and overgenerate be auxiliary forms in utterances lacking progressive participles (e.g., they are help people). A grammaticality judgement task of English tense/agreement morphology similarly shows that the child L2 English learners are significantly more sensitive to the be paradigm than to inflection on thematic verbs. These findings suggest that Tense is present in the learners’ L2 grammar, and that it is instantiated through forms of the be auxiliary. It is argued that omission of inflection is due to problems with the realization of surface morphology, rather than to feature impairment, in accordance with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis of Prévost and White (2000). It is furthermore suggested that L2 learners initially associate morphological agreement with verb-raising and, thus, acquire forms of be before inflectional morphology on in situ thematic verbs.

Missing Surface Inflection or Impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement

In this article, two accounts of the variable use of inflection in adult second language (L2) acquisition are examined. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) proposes that L2 learners have unconscious knowledge of the functional projections and features underlying tense and agreement. However, learners sometimes have a problem with realization of surface morphology, such that they resort to non-finite forms (e.g. Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997; Prévost and White, 1999). The Impaired Representation Hypothesis (IRH) claims that L2 inflection is essentially impaired, due to lack of functional categories, features or feature strength (e.g. Eubank, 1993/94; Meisel, 1997). These views make different predictions for adult L2 acquisition. Spontaneous production data from two adult learners of French and two adult learners of German are examined. The data show that finite forms do not occur in non-finite contexts, that learners exhibit syntactic reflexes of finiteness and that inflected forms largely show accurate agreement. These results suggest that adult L2 learners represent finiteness and agreement at an abstract level, rather than being impaired in this domain, supporting the MSIH.