Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T06:51:17.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The acquisition of word order in L2 Norwegian: The case of subject and object shift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

Merete Anderssen ,
Kristine Bentzen ,
Guro Busterud ,
Anne Dahl ,
Björn Lundquist  and
Marit Westergaard
Merete Anderssen
Affiliation:
Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, Björn Lundquist & Marit Westergaard, CASTL/The Department of Language and Culture, The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway. merete.anderssen@uit.no, kristine.bentzen@uit.no, bjorn.lundquist@uit.no, marit.westergaard@uit.no
Kristine Bentzen
Affiliation:
Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, Björn Lundquist & Marit Westergaard, CASTL/The Department of Language and Culture, The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway. merete.anderssen@uit.no, kristine.bentzen@uit.no, bjorn.lundquist@uit.no, marit.westergaard@uit.no
Guro Busterud
Affiliation:
Anne Dahl & Guro Busterud, Department of Language and Literature, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway. anne.j.dahl@ntnu.no, guro.busterud@ntnu.no
Anne Dahl
Affiliation:
Anne Dahl & Guro Busterud, Department of Language and Literature, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway. anne.j.dahl@ntnu.no, guro.busterud@ntnu.no
Björn Lundquist
Affiliation:
Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, Björn Lundquist & Marit Westergaard, CASTL/The Department of Language and Culture, The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway. merete.anderssen@uit.no, kristine.bentzen@uit.no, bjorn.lundquist@uit.no, marit.westergaard@uit.no
Marit Westergaard
Affiliation:
Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, Björn Lundquist & Marit Westergaard, CASTL/The Department of Language and Culture, The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, NO-9037 Tromsø, Norway. merete.anderssen@uit.no, kristine.bentzen@uit.no, bjorn.lundquist@uit.no, marit.westergaard@uit.no
Get access

Abstract

This article reports on a syntactic acceptability judgement study of 59 adult L2/Ln learners of Norwegian and a group of native controls, studying subject and object shift. These constructions involve movement of (mainly) pronominal subjects or objects across negation/adverbs. Both subject shift and object shift display considerable micro-variation in terms of syntax and information structure, dependent on factors such as nominal type (pronoun vs. full DP), function (subject vs. object), and information status (given vs. new/focused). Previous studies have shown that Norwegian children have an early preference for the unshifted position in both constructions, but that they acquire subject shift relatively early (before age 3). Object shift, on the other hand, is typically not in place until after age 6–7. Importantly, children are conservative learners, and never shift elements that should not move in the adult language. The results of the current study show that L2/Ln learners do not make all the fine distinctions that children make, in that they have a clear preference for all subjects in shifted position and all objects in unshifted position, although some distinctions fall into place with increased proficiency. Importantly, unlike children, the L2/Ln learners are not conservative learners; rather, they over-accept syntactic movement in several cases. The equivalent to this in language production would be to apply syntactic movement where it is not attested in the target language, which would be the opposite behaviour to that observed in L1 children.

Keywords

conservative learningeconomyfrequencyinformation structureL1 vs. L2/Ln acquisitionmicro-variationsyntactic movement
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , December 2018 , pp. 247 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderssen, Merete & Bentzen, Kristine. 2012. Norwegian Object Shift as IP-internal topicalization. Nordlyd 39 (1), 1–23.Google Scholar
Anderssen, Merete, Bentzen, Kristine & Rodina, Yulia. 2012. Topicality and complexity in the acquisition of Norwegian Object Shift. Language Acquisition 19 (1), 39–72.Google Scholar
Anderssen, Merete, Bentzen, Kristine, Rodina, Yulia & Westergaard, Marit. 2010. The acquisition of apparent optionality: The word order of subject- and object shift constructions in Norwegian. In Anderssen, Merete, Bentzen, Kristine & Westergaard, Marit (eds.), Variation in the Input: Studies on the Acquisition of Word Order (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics 39), 240–270. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Anderssen, Merete & Westergaard, Marit. 2010. Frequency and economy in the acquisition of variable word order. Lingua 120 (11), 2569–2588.Google Scholar
Andréasson, Maia. 2008. Not all objects are born alike: Accessibility as a key to pronominal object shift in Swedish and Danish. In Butt, Miriam & Holloway King, Tracy (eds.), Proceedings of LFG08, 26–45. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Andréasson, Maia. 2010. Object shift or object placement in general. In Butt, Miriam & King, Tracy Halloway (eds), Proceedings of the LFG10 Conference, 26–42. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistic Software 67 (1), 1–48.Google Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine. 2009. Subject positions and their interaction with verb movement. Studia Linguistica 63 (3), 1–31.Google Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine. 2014. Object Shift. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) 1, 332–343.Google Scholar
Bentzen, Kristine, Anderssen, Merete & Waldmann, Christian. 2013. Object shift in spoken Mainland Scandinavian: A corpus study of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36 (2), 115–151.Google Scholar
Blom, Elma. 2003. From Root Infinitive to Finite Sentence: The Acquisition of Verbal Inflections and Auxiliaries. Utrecht: LOT Publications.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2004. Towards a cartography of subject positions. In Rizzi, Luigi (ed.), The Structure of CP and IP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 2, 115–165. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clahsen, Harald & Felser, Claudia. 2006. Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 27 (1), 3–42.Google Scholar
Clahsen, Harald, Meisel, Jürgen M. & Pienemann, Manfred. 1983. Deutsch als Zweisprache: Der Spracherwerb ausländischer Arbeiter. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Eide, Kristin Melum. 2015. Tilegnelse av verbale kategorier [The acquisition of verbal categories]. In Eide, Kristin M. (ed.), Norsk andrespråkssyntaks [Norwegian second language syntax], 135–196. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Firbas, Jan. 1992. Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Discourse. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K. 1985. ‘Shared knowledge’ and topicality. Journal of Pragmatics 9 (1), 83–107.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1995. Root infinitives, tense and truncated structures in Dutch. Language Acquisition 4, 205–255.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3 (2), 199–244.Google Scholar
Hamann, Cornelia & Plunkett, Kim. 1998. Subjectless sentences in child Danish. Cognition 69, 35–72.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders. 1999. Remarks on Holmberg's generalization. Studia Linguistica 53 (1), 1–39.Google Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen. 1994. Getting FAT: Finiteness, Agreement and Tense in early grammars. In Meisel, Jürgen (ed.), Bilingual First Language Acquisition: French and German Grammatical Development, 89–129. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2011. On prosody and focus in Object Shift. Syntax 14 (3), 230–264.Google Scholar
Mohr, Sabine. 2005. Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions: Impersonal Constructions in the Germanic Languages (Linguistik Aktuell 88). Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Nilsen, Øystein. 1997. Adverbs and A-shift. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 59, 1–31.Google Scholar
Odlin, Terence. 2013. Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition. In Chapelle, Carol A. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 1–6. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Platzack, Christer. 1998. The Initial Hypothesis of Syntax: A minimalist perspective on language acquisition and attrition. In Clahsen, Harald (ed.), Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition, 369–414. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Poeppel, David & Wexler, Kenneth. 1993. The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language 1, 1–33.Google Scholar
Prévost, Philippe & White, Lydia. 2000. Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language? Evidence from Tense and Agreement. Second Language Research 16 (2), 103–133.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Bonnie & Sprouse, Rex. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research 12, 40–72.Google Scholar
Snyder, William. 2007. Child Language: The Parametric Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Unsworth, Sharon. 2005. Child L2, Adult L2, Child L1: Differences and Similarities. A Study on the Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling in Dutch. Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2008. Verb movement and subject placement in the acquisition of word order. In Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro, Larranaga, Pilar & Clibbens, John (eds.), First Language Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax: Perspectives across Languages and Learners (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 45), 61–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2009. The Acquisition of Word Order: Micro-cues, Information Structure and Economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2010. Cue-based acquisition and information structure drift in diachronic language development. In Ferraresi, Gisella & Lühr, Rosemarie (eds.), Diachronic Studies on Information Structure: Language Acquisition and Change (Language, Context and Cognition), 87–116. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2011. Subject positions and information structure: The effect of frequency on acquisition and change. Studia Linguistica 65 (3), 299–332.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2014. Linguistic variation and micro-cues in first language acquisition. Linguistic Variation 14 (1), 26–45.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit & Vangsnes, Øystein Aleksander. 2005. Wh-questions, V2, and the left periphery of three Norwegian dialects. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8, 117–158.Google Scholar
Wexler, Ken. 2013. Luria's biolinguistic suggestion and the growth of language. In Boeckx, Cedric & Grohmann, Kleanthes K. (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics, 94–128. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
White, Lydia. 2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiklund, Anna-Lena, Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar Hrafn, Bentzen, Kristine & Hróarsdóttir, Thorbjörg. 2007. Rethinking Scandinavian verb movement. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 10 (3), 203–233.Google Scholar