Syntax-discourse Interface Research Articles

Discourse-related expletives: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract Recent research has highlighted the existence of expletive(-like) elements in various languages that are related to discourse, serving as fillers for designated topic/focus positions and/or contributing specific discourse–pragmatic effects. Such elements pose a number of challenges and opportunities, both for our overall conception of expletives and for our understanding of the syntax–discourse interface, although work in this area to date has mainly focused on the phenomenon in individual varieties. In this study, we critically survey the current state-of-the art on this topic and discuss four main areas where we see particular challenges and opportunities for research: (i) categories and definitions, (ii) typological correlations, (iii) theoretical modelling and (iv) language change. Overall, this article brings together a broad array of empirical findings and theoretical approaches on the phenomenon of discourse-related expletives and highlights the many avenues for future work in this area.

L2 acquisition of Wh-interrogatives at the syntax-discourse interface: interface hypothesis again.

This study sets out to answer one major question: do linguistic phenomena relating to syntax-discourse interface constitute difficulty for Yemeni learners of English? It presents data from an experiment on the acquisition of L2 English wh-interrogatives by L1 Yemeni Arabic speakers, aiming to provide empirical evidence either in support of the Interface Hypothesis (IH) or against it. Two learner groups, intermediate and advanced, were recruited as participants of the study, and a native speaker group of (British) English was also recruited as the control group. The advanced group learners have a near-native proficiency in English. The data utilized consisted of 20 (D-)iscourse linked and non-d-linked wh-interrogatives presented to the three groups in the form of a (decontextualized) bi-modal multiple-choice paced judgement task. Results showed that both learner groups, specifically the advanced learners, performed near-native like in the non-d-linked, but far short of near/native-like performance in the d-linked wh-interrogatives. The study concluded that L2 learners' English is still vulnerable at the syntax-discourse interface, hence supporting the IH.

Acquisition of Structures at Syntax-Discourse Interface: Post-Verbal Subjects in L2 English

The present study explores the acceptability of postverbal subjects by intermediate and advanced L2 English learners with L1 Macedonian, a pro-drop Slavic language with rich verbal morphology. The two languages differ regarding the distribution of subject-verb inversion (SVI): in Macedonian, it is a default pattern in thetic sentences, but English severely restricts SVI to specific contexts. To test the hypothesis that Macedonian learners encounter difficulties in acquisition of English SVI because of crosslinguistic influence, a grammaticality judgement and correction task was administered to two groups of Macedonian learners of English and a control group of English native speakers. The results revealed that L2 learners find English VS sentences and VS + it-insertion examples more acceptable than the native speakers, but the performance of the advanced group is closer to the native speakers than to the intermediate learners. Both non-native groups accept more readily inappropriate English sentences that conform to typical L1 structures.

Differential Object Marking and Diachronic Incrementation in Child Heritage Romanian

In contemporary Romanian, differential object marking is undergoing a change from a system allowing two marking patterns in optional contexts to a system which preserves only one of these patterns. In the present study we verify if child heritage speakers opt for the novel system at a level beyond the one in the input. The data come from 34 narratives by 7- and 10-year-old heritage speakers of Romanian living in France, compared to 34 narratives by monolingual children living in the homeland, 11 adult first generation immigrants from France and 10 Romanian adults from Romania. The findings suggest that language change is not advanced in a heritage language acquisition scenario when the change is found in the weaker language and targets a phenomenon at the syntax-discourse interface.

The production of preverbal and postverbal subjects by Italian heritage children: Timing of acquisition matters

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax–discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are difficult for HL speakers across the board or whether different types of structures are associated with different acquisition outcomes. In this study, we investigate whether the timing of the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface structures among monolingual children affects their acquisition by HL children. We consider the acquisition of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs in Italian. This alternation involves the syntax–discourse interface across all verb types. However, mastery of this alternation has a different timing in monolingual acquisition depending on the verb type: it emerges earlier in association with unaccusative verbs than unergative and transitive ones. We elicit narratives in Italian from 42 Italian heritage children living in Germany and ranging in age from 7 to 14 years. We focus on the analysis of preverbal and postverbal subjects, considering the effect of verb type and discourse status of the subject. The children show a good mastery of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, whereas they exhibit difficulties with the same alternation in association with transitive and unergative verbs. Furthermore, postverbal subjects with transitive verbs are particularly vulnerable to cross-linguistic effects from German. The results of the study suggest a gradient interpretation of heritage speakers’ difficulty with syntax–discourse interface structures, with timing in monolingual acquisition being a relevant factor that modulates the degree of this difficulty. The results are not affected by children’s dominance of exposure to Italian or age.

Feature reassembly and L1 preemption: Acquiring CLLD in L2 Italian and L2 Romanian.

This study investigates feature acquisition and feature reassembly associated with Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD). The article compares the acquisition of CLLD in second language (L2) Italian to L2 Romanian to examine effects of first language (L1) transfer, construction frequency and the type of interface involved (external vs. internal interface) within the same syntactic construction. The results from an acceptability judgment task and a written elicitation task show that while English near-native speakers of Italian/Romanian acquired the L2 constraints on CLLD, which is [+anaphor] for Italian and [+specific] for Romanian, data from both Romanian L2 learners of Italian and Italian L2 learners of Romanian showed persistent L1 transfer effects. Target-like acquisition for these groups requires both grammatical expansion and retraction; Romanian CLLD requires the addition of an L1-unavailable [+specific] feature and the loss of a [+anaphor] feature, while Italian CLLD requires the addition of an L1-unavailable [+anaphor] and the loss of a [+specific] feature. The reported findings extend evidence in favour of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to the syntax-discourse interface, as reassembly of interpretational features associated with CLLD proved more difficult than feature acquisition. While learners at the near-native levels were able to broaden the contexts that allow a clitic in the L2 (grammatical expansion), L1 preemption difficulties were attested as well. This was the case regardless of the frequency of the relevant construction in the input and the type of L2 feature that needed to be added/removed.

Interaction between syntactic and information structure in the second language processing of Korean dative sentences

It remains an open question whether second language (L2) learners can process linguistic properties at the syntax–discourse interface. This study examines this issue in the context of the L2 processing of Korean dative sentences under different information structure requirements. Given that discourse constraints associated with information structure tend to manifest more strongly in noncanonical than in canonical structures, we tested whether L2 learners of Korean show sensitivity to such constraints during online processing. In a story-continuation task, both native and nonnative speaker groups showed a strong preference for producing canonical dative patterns, indicating their comparable knowledge of the canonical status of Korean dative sentences. In a self-paced reading task, both groups spent longer reading times when the word order of dative sentences did not follow given–new information structure, but only for the noncanonical and not the canonical structure. These results suggest that L2 processing of dative structures at the syntax–discourse interface relies on the same parsing architecture that guides native-speaker processing.

Is L1 Transfer Operative at the Syntax-Discourse Interface? The Acquisition of Null and Overt Subjects in L2 Turkish

Recent studies on L2 acquisition focus on how interface-related properties are acquired at the end state grammars. Proposed as part of this theme, the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Sorace, 2011) claims that the syntax-discourse interface is particularly challenging to acquire, irrespective of the L1 and L2 of the speakers. On the other hand, the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) predicts that L2 acquisition is L1-constrained and UG is directly accessed. This study tests these assumptions on the acquisition of null and overt subjects in L2 Turkish to understand whether L1 transfer operates in the domain that needs the mapping of syntax on the discursive knowledge. This was tested in a study on advanced Korean and Japanese L2 Turkish speakers (n=27) by employing contextualized grammaticality judgment task (CGJT). In this task, participants were asked to judge whether the contextualized sentences they read were pragmatically odd or not (for each condition n=4). The discursive constraints (topic continuity and topic shift) on the use of null and overt subjects were not violated in the first two conditions. However, the latter two conditions violated the discursive constraints, rendering unacceptable null and overt subject constructions. The results of the CGJT revealed that the L2 participants were insensitive to the discourse of null and overt subject distribution. Since the very same constraints that regulate the null and overt subject distribution hold both in the L1 and L2 of the speakers, this finding suggests that L1 transfer is not operative at the syntax-discourse interface, which is in line with the claim that the properties at this interface cannot be fully acquired as postulated by the Interface Hypothesis.

L2 representation and processing of Spanish focus

ABSTRACT Research on second-language (L2) acquisition has identified linguistic domains that appear to be especially difficult to learn—one such sticking point being syntactic structures that depend on the surrounding discourse. The Interface Hypothesis (IH) explains what makes such constructions problematic by appealing to a modular view of language, arguing that integrating knowledge from language-internal domains (e.g., syntax) with language-external domains (e.g., discourse) overwhelms the finite processing resources of L2 learners, especially when integration happens in real time. We test the IH with a syntax-discourse interface phenomenon in Spanish: information focus. The facts about information focus in L1 and L2 Spanish have been enthusiastically debated, but what is missing from these debates is evidence that directly indexes processing, which is essential to evaluate the IH. We use an off-line forced-choice judgment task and an online self-paced reading task to provide a new source of evidence of L2 acquisition of Spanish focus. We find that L1-English/L2-Spanish learners largely resemble L1-Spanish natives in both their judgments and their processing of focus, contrary to the predictions of the IH.

Crosslinguistic influence from Catalan and Yucatec Maya on judgments and processing of Spanish focus

Abstract Although a bilingual’s knowledge of one language can affect the other, crosslinguistic influence (CLI) is constrained: certain domains, such as the syntax-discourse interface, are more likely to be affected. Linguists have debated CLI’s nature and cause: the Structural Overlap Hypothesis identifies surface overlap between the languages as the key factor determining CLI, while the Interface Hypothesis highlights the role of processing overloads. Our study presents evidence from processing and judgments of a syntax-discourse interface property – information focus – in the Spanish of Yucatecan Spanish monolinguals, Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilinguals, and Catalan-Spanish bilinguals. The comparison across language dyads that realize information focus in different ways allows us to test predictions for language-specific effects of CLI. Using a forced-choice task to measure offline sentence preferences and a self-paced reading task to measure real-time processing, we find (i) language-specific CLI for Yucatec Maya bilinguals but (ii) no CLI for Catalan bilinguals and (iii) no significant differences in real-time processing. We conclude that these results provide partial support for the Structural Overlap Hypothesis but do not align with the Interface Hypothesis. We also examine the role of language dominance on CLI but find no such effects.

Language Interfaces in Adult Heritage Language Acquisition: A Study on Encoding of Nominal Reference in Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language

According to the Interface Hypothesis in the field of bilingualism, the interface connecting a linguistic module with a language-external domain (e.g., syntax-discourse) will present prolonged difficulties for adult bilingual learners, as compared with the interface connecting language-internal modules (e.g., syntax-semantics). This study tested whether the Interface Hypothesis is applicable to the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a heritage language. An internet-based acceptability judgment task (AJT) was administered to 58 advanced and intermediate adult Chinese heritage speakers to collect data in accuracy and reaction time to investigate the adult heritage speakers’ mastery of referential nominal expressions regulated at the syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse interfaces, respectively, in Mandarin Chinese. The target linguistic phenomena involved three nominal expressions (i.e., the bare N(oun), the [Cl(assifier)-N], and the [Num(eral)-Cl-N]) under four interface-regulated referential readings (i.e., type-denoting, quantity-denoting, indefinite individual-denoting, and definite individual-denoting). In terms of accuracy, the results showed that (i) for the N and the [Num-Cl-N], regardless of the interface type, the advanced group acquired the target phenomena to a nativelike level, who significantly outperformed the intermediate group; (ii) for the [Cl-N], the advanced group exhibited nativelike attainment at the syntax-discourse interface but not at the syntax-semantics interface, and performed significantly better than the intermediate group at both interfaces. Regarding reaction time, no significant differences were reported between the advanced group and the native group for the target structures at either the syntax-semantics or the syntax-discourse interface, while the advanced group performed significantly better than the intermediate group, regardless of the interface type and the structure type. The findings suggest that the nature of the language interface, i.e., whether it pertains to language-external domains (i.e., the external interface) or not (i.e., the internal interface), should not be a reliable factor for predicting the (im)possibility of nativelike attainment of bilingual grammar knowledge, contra the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis. The present study provides new empirical evidence to show that language-external interface properties are not necessarily destined for prolonged difficulties in heritage language acquisition, and that it is possible for adult heritage speakers to make developmental progress in both accuracy and processing efficiency at different types of interfaces.

The L2 Acquisition of French Interrogatives: Pragmatic Inferences in Clefted wh-Questions

The present study aims to elaborate on the understanding of the second language (L2) acquisition of French interrogatives by focusing on clefted (subject) wh-questions, structures that are largely absent in prior L2 literature. Our research question addresses how L2 learners of French understand two specific properties associated with these interrogatives: existence and exhaustivity. Using two rating tasks, we examined whether a total of 48 L2 learners converge towards the native norm for these properties, which occur at the syntax-discourse interface and may therefore be vulnerable to incomplete acquisition, following the Interface Hypothesis. Our findings suggest that L2 learners at the intermediate level acquire an understanding of the existential inference before an understanding of exhaustivity.

A formal approach to role language: sentence-final particles and the speaker-hearer link

Abstract This paper addresses sentence-final items that fall into the category of role language in Japanese and proposes an analysis from a cartographic perspective. To this end, the syntactic and semantic properties of these items are investigated, with particular attention to their distribution concerning root/embedded context and clause type. The investigation shows that the elements under consideration can be classified into three subcategories and that they are all connected to the speaker-hearer link via agreement relationship, on a par with the politeness marker -mas-. It is also argued that only one subcategory, dubbed gender particles, additionally interacts with illocutionary force and clause type of the sentence, similarly to discourse particles. From this study, it is implied that the role language can be studied within the framework of a syntax-discourse interface.

Adquisició del canvi de rol i dels classificadors en el discurs narratiu en llengua de signes catalana (LSC) com a L2: un estudi pilot

Summary: A growing interest in the study of sign language linguistics deals with how the differences between the visual-gestural modality and the vocal-auditory modality affect the acquisition of a sign language by adults whose first language is a spoken language. This paper presents a pilot study on the acquisition of two essential and, to a large extent, specific characteristics of signed languages used in reference control: the nonmanual markers in role shift structures and classifiers. The comparison between native discourse in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) and adult learners of LSC as L2 with different levels of competence provides a careful insight into how these two reference mechanisms are used in the acquisition process. The present study analyses reference control in L2 signed discourse in terms of reference accessibility and the discussion is placed at the syntax-discourse interface. The detailed analysis shows how nonmanuals of role shift and classifiers play an important role in reference control, which implies an important position in the accessibility scale of discourse referents. Keywords: accessibility, acquisition, Catalan Sign Language (LSC), classifiers, discourse referents, nonmanual markers, pronouns, reference control, role shift, second language (L2)

Focus at the syntax–discourse interface in L2 Spanish: Optionality and unaccusativity reconsidered

We examine the second language (L2) acquisition of variable Spanish word order by first language (L1) speakers of English via the acquisition of unaccusative and transitive predicates in various focus-related contexts. We employ two bimodal linguistic tasks: (1) acceptability judgment task (B-AJT) and (2) appropriateness preference task (B-APT). Both present contextualized prompts similar to previous studies, followed by response options with accompanying audio to control for intonation and pauses. Results suggest a number of key findings: (1) by the high intermediate level, L2ers acquire the relevant syntactic and syntax information structure interface competencies for both predicate types; (2) native speakers and L2 groups exhibit optionality, and only differ in nuanced ways; and (3) advanced learners show signs of acquiring syntactic and syntax–information structure competencies in numerous contexts, but display minor differences regarding optionality with corrective focus, an interface incorporating multiple interfaces (syntax–prosody pragmatics). Unlike the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis (IH), this subtle, non-native-like divergence is characterized by divergent knowledge of optionality similar to that found among native speakers. Attempting to understand more completely the development of native-speaker optionality, we also conduct a corpus study of child-directed Spanish from CHILDES and find that, although syntactic theory explains much of the data, it cannot account for all of the variability in the data. Results suggest that children are exposed to apparent optionality from the earliest stages.

Unclogging the Bottleneck: The role of case morphology in L2 acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface

ABSTRACT The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features onto inflectional morphemes. Against this backdrop, the present study focuses on the interplay between case morphology and acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena in the second language German of French native speakers. Whereas the Bottleneck Hypothesis predicts that discourse-driven syntactic alternations come for free when case morphology is in place, a concurrent prediction is made by the Interface Hypothesis, which suggests that the syntax-discourse interface is vulnerable per se, irrespective of L1-L2 differences at the interface between morphology and syntax. We tested 45 L2 learners in (i) a semicontrolled production task in context (element rearrangement task) targeting argument reordering (object fronting) as a function of the information status of discourse referents; (ii) a fill-in-the-blanks task involving the use of case endings; and (iii) a general proficiency test. Contra the Interface Hypothesis, results showed that argument reordering was affected by discourse properties of referents. Turning to the Bottleneck Hypothesis, learners’ command of case was identified as a reliable predictor of convergence in discourse-to-syntax mappings, which confirms the key role of inflectional morphology in the acquisition of other grammar areas, including interfaces between grammar and grammar-external domains such as discourse.

Fossilization of English as an L2 non-native constructions at the syntax-discourse interface in Romance L1 speakers

espanolEste estudio examina y compara la produccion del ingles como lengua extranjera de dos grupos de hablantes con respecto a algunas manifestaciones de la expresion del sujeto en el discurso. El primero es de 12 alumnos espanoles avanzados de ingles como lengua extranjera al final de su licenciatura en Filologia Inglesa, y el segundo de 9 hablantes adultos de lenguas romanicas residentes en paises de habla inglesa durante decadas. Se intenta comprobar la hipotesis de que la inversion verbo-sujeto con verbos inacusativos y la omision de los sujetos pronominales identificados por el discurso en la lengua nativa constituyen elementos de fosilizacion si su pervivencia se mantiene en el grupo segundo, a pesar de su larga y abundante exposicion a la L2 y su frecuente interaccion en la misma. EnglishThis study examines and compares the English as a foreign language production of two groups of speakers with respect to certain manifestations of the expression of the subject in discourse. One of the groups consists of 12 advanced EFL university English majors living in Spain, the other of 9 adult Romance speakers having lived in an English speaking country for several decades. The hypothesis is tested that subject inversion with unaccusative verbs and pronominal subject omission when identified in discourse constitute fossilization phenomena as verified by their perseverance in the second group of learners despite their long and rich exposure to the L2 and their frequent interaction in it.

The computation and suspension of presuppositions by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that second language (L2) learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate information at the external interfaces where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems. While much early L2 work has focused on the syntax–discourse interface or scalar implicatures at the semantics–pragmatics interface, the present article adds to this line of research by exploring another understudied phenomenon at the semantics–pragmatics interface, namely, presuppositions. Furthermore, this study explores both inference computation and suspension via a covered-box picture-selection task. Specifically, this study investigates the interpretation of the presupposition trigger stop and stop under negation. The results from 38 native English speakers and 41 first language (L1) Mandarin Chinese learners of English indicated similar response patterns between native and L2 groups in computing presuppositions but not in suspending presuppositions. That is, L2 learners were less likely to suspend presuppositions than native speakers. This study contributes to a more precise understanding of L2 acquisition at the external interface level, as well as computation and suspension of pragmatic inferences.

Treinta años de estudios sobre sintaxis histórica de la lengua española en la Edad Media y el Renacimiento: enfoques y propuestas

In this paper we review the studies and lines of research in historical syntax of Spanish referring to the medieval and Renaissance period during the last 30 years. We particularly highlight the figure of Rafael Lapesa, the great promoter of historical syntax studies in the last decades of the last century, the work of Concepción Company, director of the first great historical syntax of Spanish and the works collected in the proceedings of the international congresses on the history of the Spanish language, which are a clear testimony to the development of different interests in the field of Spanish history in recent years. We emphasize the importance of the arrival of online corpus, which has meant a methodological renovation in historical studies, and we point out some fruitful lines of research in recent decades, such as research on grammaticalization processes or on discursive traditions in relation to historical syntax. The syntax-pragmatic and syntax-discourse interface also shows promising development paths.

Gradient optionality in L2 acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface: Evidence from inversion in advanced and near-native English

This article investigates the acquisition of two structures involving the syntax-discourse interface, locative inversion (LI) and there-constructions (TC), by advanced and near-native speakers of English whose L1s are European Portuguese and French. Its purpose is to test two hypotheses on the end-state of L2 acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface: the Interface Hypothesis (IH) and the L1+input Hypothesis (LIH). The former proposes that this interface is a locus permanent optionality due to processing inefficiencies related to bilingualism. The latter claims that syntax-discourse structures only generate persistent problems when they are different in the L1 and rare in the input. A battery of timed and untimed tasks tested the verbs and discourse contexts compatible with LI and TC. All L2 groups exhibited optionality regarding the phenomena tested at least in one type of task. Crucially, the control group did not display optionality in any tasks. These results indicate that, as the IH predicts, the syntax-discourse interface is an area of persistent optionality, even when the L1 is similar to the L2. They moreover suggest that optionality is gradient and influenced by, at least, four factors: construction frequency, the quantity and/or distance of the contextual information to be processed, L1-L2 (dis)similarity, and L2 proficiency.