Adult Acquisition of Infinitives in Spanish by Nahuatl speakers
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo
The University of Western Ontario
aramire@uwo.ca
Within the generative framework, it has been proposed that when two languages are acquired simultaneously, two grammatical systems are developed. Nevertheless, crosslinguistic influence, that is, the influence of one language on another, may take place (Hulk and Müller 2000; Müller and Hulk 2001). In this paper I investigate the acquisition of Spanish infinitives by Nahuatl speakers (Spanish/Nahuatl bilingual speakers and speakers of Spanish as a second language whose first language is Nahuatl). I will discuss whether learners are able to ‘delearn’ some aspects of their native language in order to acquire a simplified form of a more complex structure that is already present in their first language.
Spanish, unlike Nahuatl, is a language with infinitives (see example 1); therefore, every verb has a non-conjugated form which is morphologically marked. On the other hand, Nahuatl is an agglutinative language with no infinitives but a root that works like a bound morpheme, that is, a morpheme that does not have meaning by itself if it is not accompanied by something else such as agreement or tense morphemes (see example 2).
1) Yo no quiero ir a la cama sin comer
I-pro neg want-1st inf-to go to the bed without inf-eat
‘I do not want to go to bed without eating’
2) a. Ni- k- neki ni- choca-s
1st p. Obj.Agr. want-pres 1st p. cry-fut
‘I want to cry’
b. *Yo lloro yo quiero (Nahuatl sentence is ungrammatical in Spanish
English)
Since in the Spanish infinitive constructions we have a conjugated verb accompanied by an infinitive verb, I propose that, in this type of structures, there is just one tense phrase (TP). However, in the case of Nahuatl, where we have two conjugated verbs together, we have a structure with two TP’s. As a consequence of this, Nahuatl speakers have to delearn one TP in order to produce the Spanish infinitive constructions. I will report on an experiment carried out in Mexico where speakers of Nahuatl (n=26) were asked to answer a grammaticality judgement task that compared phrases like the ones showed above in 2a and 2b, and a production task in which participants were asked to describe pictures that elicited infinitive constructions. I expect to contribute evidence to the validation of the hypothesis of crosslinguistic influence due to language contact.
Alma P. Ramírez-Trujillo
The University of Western Ontario
aramire@uwo.ca
Within the generative framework, it has been proposed that when two languages are acquired simultaneously, two grammatical systems are developed. Nevertheless, crosslinguistic influence, that is, the influence of one language on another, may take place (Hulk and Müller 2000; Müller and Hulk 2001). In this paper I investigate the acquisition of Spanish infinitives by Nahuatl speakers (Spanish/Nahuatl bilingual speakers and speakers of Spanish as a second language whose first language is Nahuatl). I will discuss whether learners are able to ‘delearn’ some aspects of their native language in order to acquire a simplified form of a more complex structure that is already present in their first language.
Spanish, unlike Nahuatl, is a language with infinitives (see example 1); therefore, every verb has a non-conjugated form which is morphologically marked. On the other hand, Nahuatl is an agglutinative language with no infinitives but a root that works like a bound morpheme, that is, a morpheme that does not have meaning by itself if it is not accompanied by something else such as agreement or tense morphemes (see example 2).
1) Yo no quiero ir a la cama sin comer
I-pro neg want-1st inf-to go to the bed without inf-eat
‘I do not want to go to bed without eating’
2) a. Ni- k- neki ni- choca-s
1st p. Obj.Agr. want-pres 1st p. cry-fut
‘I want to cry’
b. *Yo lloro yo quiero (Nahuatl sentence is ungrammatical in Spanish
English)
Since in the Spanish infinitive constructions we have a conjugated verb accompanied by an infinitive verb, I propose that, in this type of structures, there is just one tense phrase (TP). However, in the case of Nahuatl, where we have two conjugated verbs together, we have a structure with two TP’s. As a consequence of this, Nahuatl speakers have to delearn one TP in order to produce the Spanish infinitive constructions. I will report on an experiment carried out in Mexico where speakers of Nahuatl (n=26) were asked to answer a grammaticality judgement task that compared phrases like the ones showed above in 2a and 2b, and a production task in which participants were asked to describe pictures that elicited infinitive constructions. I expect to contribute evidence to the validation of the hypothesis of crosslinguistic influence due to language contact.
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Copula omission in the English grammar of English-Spanish bilinguals: a “transfer” account
A. Alba de la Fuente, University of Ottawa
R. Fernández Fuertes, Universidad de Valladolid
J. M. Liceras, Universidad de Ottawa
The debate on whether the omission of subjects in child language is to be accounted for syntactically (Hyams and Wexler 1993) or is the result of a processing deficit (Valian 1991, Valian and Eisenberg 1996) has been extrapolated to copula omission by Becker (2002, 2004). This author argues that the differences in the use of overt copula be versus null copula be in child English rather than being a product of sentence length are determined by the semantic nature of the predicate as in (1) versus (2).
(1) lady __ on that (Nina, 2;02) (2) this is lady (Naomi, 2;02)
Locative predicates, as the Prepositional Phrase in (1), are aspectual and it is their Aspectual Phrase that provides temporal anchoring to the sentence (Guéron and Hoekstra 1995). This results in the possibility of using null be with these types of predicates. However, Nominal predicates, like the Noun Phrase in (2), are not aspectual and, therefore, copula be must be explicit to ensure temporal anchoring.
As for copula be with adjective predicates as in (3) and (4), these predicates could be considered Locative or Nominal (Stage-Level or Individual-Level, following Carlson 1977 and Schmitt and Miller’s 2007 terminology) depending on the type of adjective and on the context, so that (3) would contain a Locative/Stage-Level predicate, while (4) a Nominal/Individual-Level one. In this case, even though the results were less clear-cut and individual differences occurred both quantitatively and qualitatively, the stage-level predicate (3) versus the individual-level predicate (4) dichotomy parallels the Locative/Nominal one.
(3) I __ hungry (Leo, 2;11) (4) Elmo is blue (Simon, 2;05)
In this paper, we provide an analysis of the copula in the developing English grammar of two English/Spanish simultaneous bilingual children in order to address the following issues: 1) whether a grammar-based or a processing-based approach best accounts for child omissions; 2) whether our data mirror the ones discussed by Becker with respect to the differences between Locative and Stage-level predicates versus Nominal and Individual level predicates; 3) whether the differences and similarities are shaped by the fact that Spanish copula is realized by two lexical items: estar (for cases like those in (1) and (3) above) and ser (for cases like those in (2) and (4) above); in other words, whether interlinguistic influence (Hulk and Müller 2000; Paradis and Navarro 2003) can be found in this specific area of grammar.
We have analyzed longitudinal data from the two bilingual children which cover the same age and MLU counts as in the four children in Becker’s (2004) study. An analysis of our data shows that: (i) a grammatical account is favoured over a processing one when the length of the utterances is measured as a word count; (ii) even though there are some similarities in the overall omission patterns with respect to the Locative/Nominal predicate dichotomy, the results are never significant. In the case of the Stage/Individual-level predicates, our data are even less transparent than the monolingual data: in fact our two children display opposite patterns of omission; and (iii) the lexical transparency of Spanish copula estar seems to play a role in the need to incorporate the inflectional level and, therefore, in the copula omission pattern, since our children’s rate of omission is significantly lower than the rate of omission displayed by Becker’s monolingual children.