l3/ln acquisition: a view from the outside

L3/Ln Acquisition: A View from the Outside

Roumyana Slabakova

University of Iowa

This paper approaches the research questions in current L3 acquisition research from the point of

view of the current debates in L2A. We consider published L3 acquisition data to see whether

four current hypotheses: the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, the Interface Hypothesis, the

Bottleneck Hypothesis, and the Interpretability Hypothesis can give us explanations of the

linguistic processes of multilingualism. As an answer to the question “what transfers in L3A?”,

the Modular Transfer Hypothesis is proposed, arguing that what transfers is essentially

dependent on the intrinsic difficulty of the linguistic property. It is demonstrated that difficulty

depends both on morphology and/or meaning mismatches between the L1, L2 and L3, as well as

on the frequency of the available evidence for the property to be acquired. (123 words)

Keywords: Grammatical aspect, states, accomplishments, achievements, Preterit, Imperfect,

Spanish, Romance, Brazilian Portuguese, clitics, Chinese, clitic reconstruction, clitic climbing

(both under clitics), Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, Interpretability Hypothesis, Interface

Hypothesis, Bottleneck Hypothesis, Variability Hypothesis, Modular Transfer Hypothesis,

Typological Primacy Model

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1. Introduction

In the last decade, linguistic research on second language acquisition has been inspired by a

search to identify principled, not ad hoc or post factum, explanations of this many-faceted

cognitive process. In the 1990s, the debate on the initial state of L2A took center stage, but after

2000, emphasis shifted to identifying sources of errors and diverging L2 representations. In this

search for principled explanations, the relative difficulty or ease of acquisition of various

properties has received heightened attention. If we can explain why L2 learners have a persistent

difficulty with some linguistic properties for which there is abundant evidence in the input to

these learners, but have no trouble with some other properties that are really subtle and are

supported by very little to no evidence in the input, we would be on our way to explaining the

language acquisition process as well as making suggestions to instructional practice.

This search is not new, of course, and efforts to isolate factors contributing to difficulty

have been proposed ever since the Morpheme Studies. More recently, DeKeyser (2005)

identified three factors that make a linguistic form difficult: complexity of form, complexity of

meaning, and complexity of form-meaning relationship. Additional factors are classified under

the latter relationship: saliency, opacity, frequency, redundancy, etc. I have argued that while

frequency and saliency certainly play a role in language acquisition, it is no more than a

secondary role (Slabakova 2008: 268-275). If we ground our explanations of difficulty on

linguistic theory, we notice that complexity of meaning does not provide an adequate account.

Current views of language architecture assume that meaning is universal, in the sense that all

languages are capable of expressing every meaning (the emphasis here is on grammatical

meaning, not lexical meaning) (Jackendoff 2002, among others). The differences among

languages stem from different mappings between the grammatical concepts and the way

L3/Ln Acquisition: A View from the Outside 3

languages mark them. For example, topic and focus are marked by intonation in some languages,

by word order changes in others, and a combination of both in still others. Some languages also

leave them unmarked and rely on the discourse context to provide that information. In general,

the possible expressions of grammatical meaning are: a morpheme or combination of

morphemes, word order changes, special intonation, or nothing. In the latter case, the structure is

left vague with respect to the property, and the discourse context fixes the value (e.g., article

meaning in languages without articles). If one meaning is reflected in a morpheme in one

language and by word order in another, then it is not the meaning itself, but rather its mapping

that has to be acquired and that presents difficulty.

The advantage of explanations within the generative linguistic framework is that they are

based on an independently provided property theory, use legitimate distinctions falling out of the

language architecture and they also make predictions for acquisition. In the next section, I will

briefly summarize four such proposals, each trying to identify principled sources of linguistic

difficulty. I will outline the predictions they make for L3/Ln acquisition. Next, I will look at

published L3A data to check for a double outcome: whether these L2 theories can explain the L3

data; and whether the L3 data can provide support for one or another of the L2A proposals. In

the discussion section, I will address the “what transfers in L3A?” question.

2. Four Theoretical Proposals Explaining Linguistic Difficulty

2.1. The Interpretability Hypothesis

Let us start with the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori 2006; Tsimpli &

Dimitrakopoulou 2007), which is a successor of the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis

(Hawkins & Chan 1997). The Interpretability Hypothesis capitalizes on the independently

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proposed minimal distinction between interpretable and uninterpretable formal features. The

former are syntactic features that make a contribution in the calculation of meaning, that is, they

remain active at the syntax-semantics interface, (e.g., tense, aspect, definiteness, etc). The latter

are only responsible for displacement of constituents in the narrow syntax and as such have to be

checked and deleted before that interface (e.g., case). Good examples of both are agreement

features (person, number and gender in some languages): agreement features are interpretable on

the subject but uninterpretable on the verb that has to agree with the subject. The hypothesis

claims that only uninterpretable, but not interpretable features, which do not transfer from the L1

and thus have to be acquired with the help of UG, will present permanent difficulty for learners.

The burden of proof on this hypothesis is to explain the successful acquisition of some structures

that depend on uninterpretable features, such as wh-movement. Apparent success in acquisition

is explained by this proposal as imitation of native speaker behavior in the absence of substantive

representational changes to the interlanguage grammar. Proponents of this theory (Hawkins,

Tsimpli) would predict that if uninterpretable features are responsible for a certain construction

or property, neither the L1 nor the L2 should be able to aid the learner of an L3/Ln. Thus, this

proposal makes negative predictions, remaining silent on whether the L1 or the L2 interpretable

features would be transferred.

2.2. The Interface Hypothesis

Sorace (2000, 2003) advanced another interesting hypothesis with respect to differential

difficulty. Aspects of grammar that require the integration of syntactic knowledge with other

types of information (e.g., pragmatic, semantic, prosodic) are more problematic for the L2

learners than properties that require narrow syntactic knowledge. These latter properties may


present residual difficulties even at the near-native level. In other words, the vulnerability resides

at the interfaces: syntax-semantics, semantics-pragmatics, etc. The proposal implies terminal

inability for near-native speakers to retreat from optionality in production or indeterminacy in

their comprehension judgments for properties located at the interfaces. Sorace dubs this the

Interface Hypothesis.

The second articulation of this proposal (Sorace 2011) offers an interesting clarification

and specification of these claims. It compares external interfaces (by definition, those where the

syntax interfaces with other cognitive domains) to internal ones (those between syntax and the

internal linguistic modules such as the lexicon, morphology, semantics, phonetics/phonology)

(e.g., Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Sorace & Serratrice 2009; Tsimpli & Sorace 2006), proposing that

external interfaces result in greater difficulties than internal ones. Both versions of the Interface

Hypothesis point to the syntax/discourse interface and the interpretable features active at this

interface as a source of significant difficulty revealed by optionality and indeterminacy of

judgments even at near-native levels. The obvious prediction of this hypothesis would be that

residual L1 effects will be compounded by residual L2 effects at the L3 syntax-discourse

interface. Acquisition at that interface, especially if the L1 and L2 opt for different strategies of

marking topic and focus, is predicted to be extra difficult. Indirectly, this hypothesis also predicts

that core syntactic properties and properties at the syntax-semantics interface will not present

insurmountable difficulties.

2.3. The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis

In elaborating on morphological competence Lardiere (2007, 2008) considers concrete

examples of morphological mapping difficulty and then follows the same linguistic properties in

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the fossilized grammar of a learner, Patty. For example, the interpretable feature Tense cannot be

taken to have simple plus or minus values in a grammar (plus in English, minus in Cantonese,

one of Patty’s native languages). In addition to a past eventuality, the past tense morphology in

English signals perfectivity (I ate the pizza = the pizza is gone), uncertainty or politeness (I was

wondering…), counterfactuality (If I had time … = but I don’t) and even a present eventuality in

sequence of tenses (Jane said that Joyce was pregnant). On the other hand, historical present is

very common in spoken language referring to past events. Thus, with the feature of present we

have a many-to-many relationship between form and meaning. Lardiere cautions against

speaking of an “amalgamated feature” of Tense as being parameterized in the sense that some

languages have it and some don’t. The Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis argues that the more re-

assembly of features is necessary in the mapping of form to meaning with respect to a certain

linguistic property, the harder the acquisition task is. This difficulty is bound to be exacerbated in

L3A situations where there are three form-to meaning mappings to be considered, learned and

de-learned.1

2.4. The Bottleneck Hypothesis

The Bottleneck Hypothesis builds on The Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis and on

White’s syntax-before morphology view (White 2003)2 to argue that inflectional morphology is

the bottleneck of the entire L2 acquisition process. In comparison to the inflectional morphology,

1 De-learning a property does not mean that the learner no longer knows something about a given language but that the learner acquires the ungrammaticality, or unavailability in the L2, of a construction that is available in the learner’s native language. For example, an Anglophone learner of Spanish needs to “de-learn” the double object construction, which is available in English but ungrammatical in Spanish. 2 The syntax-before-morphology view assumes that abstract morphological features, those that have an effect on sentence syntax and semantics, should be treated as distinct from the surface morphological forms. On this view, L2 learners who do not have perfect performance on the inflectional morphology can still have engaged the functional categories related to that morphology and have the abstract syntactic features represented in their interlanguage grammar.


L2 acquisition of the semantics and linguistic pragmatics flows much more smoothly. There are

theoretical and empirical reasons for that. Most importantly, the inflectional morphology is the

locus of all formal features and thus the locus of all possible parametric values of features. In

other words, language diversity resides in the functional lexicon. In comparison to the functional

lexicon, semantic and linguistic pragmatic computations are universal (Jackendoff 2002). In

comparison to the functional lexicon, syntactic computation flows from universal mechanisms

once an individual acquires the formal features that determine the various syntactic operations.

However, we should not think of parameters as on-and-off switches any more (Lardiere, 2009).

We should consider the various meanings that can be expressed by a feature, various

combinations of features in a piece of morphology, and even that some meanings may be left

open-valued for the context to fix. Empirical support for the Bottleneck Hypothesis comes from

the documented difficulty of inflectional morphology in acquisition as compared to purely

syntactic, pragmatic and semantic properties, as well as the distinctive processing of the

inflectional morphology.

The predictions of the Bottleneck Hypothesis for L3/Ln acquisition will not be so

different from the predictions for L2A: the functional lexicon will present most difficulty.

Attendant meanings will not be available before adequate knowledge of the morphology, but it

could be expected that knowledge of functional syntax and semantics may precede full accurate

representation and recall of morphological paradigms. In the next section, I will present the

findings of three published studies on L3 acquisition and consider how the predictions of the four

theoretical proposals are supported by these findings.

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3. L3A Data Meet the L2A Hypotheses

3.1. Chin (2008)

Chin (2008) tests acquisition of grammatical aspectual meanings in the following

configuration: L1 Chinese à L2 English à L3 Spanish,3 borrowing a test design from Montrul

and Slabakova (2002, 2003). The well-known aspectual contrast between Preterit and Imperfect

tenses in Spanish is illustrated in Figure 2 below, representing a classical case of a form-meaning

mismatch in grammatical aspect. The arrows stand for a mapping between a morphological form

and one of the aspectual meanings. While English past progressive and Spanish Imperfect

morphemes may superficially seem as a good match, they actually represent different meanings;

the same is true for the English past simple and the Spanish Preterit.

Figure 1: Morpheme-meaning mappings in Spanish and English

When the Chinese aspectual morphology is taken into account, the learning task gets a lot

more complicated. Chin conservatively considers the relevant Chinese morphemes to be le the

perfective marker, zai the progressive marker, and zhe the durative marker. These markers

interact in different ways with lexical aspectual classes: le is available with all lexical classes, zai

is unavailable with states, while zhe is only available with states. Note also that zai and zhe

3 The arrow is shorthand for direction of acquisition. L1 Chinese à L2 English à L3 Spanish should be read as native speakers of Chinese having acquired English as a second language and studying Spanish as a third language.

English: past progressive past simple meanings: ongoing habitual one-time completed event Spanish: Imperfect Preterit


together cannot be mapped onto Spanish Imperfect because the latter is available with

achievements, while both Chinese morphemes are not. In English and Spanish, achievements in

the imperfective aspect refer to the preliminary steps coming before the change of state.

(1) Los González vendían la casa pero nadie la compró.

the González sell-IMPERF the house but nobody it bought

‘The González family was selling the house but nobody bought it.’

Tables 1-3 adapted from Chin present the Chinese, English and Spanish lexical aspect–

grammatical aspect combinations and meanings.

Table 1: Semantic interpretation of the aspectual markings on states in Spanish, English and

Chinese

Imperfective Perfective

Spanish state change of state/temporary state

English temporary state state

Chinese state initiation of state

Table 2: Semantic interpretation of the aspectual markings on accomplishments in Spanish,

English and Chinese


Spanish ongoing or habitual event completed event

English ongoing event completed or habitual event

Chinese ongoing event terminated event

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Table 3: Semantic interpretation of the aspectual markings on achievements in Spanish, English

and Chinese


Spanish activity leading up to change of state

completed event

English activity leading up to change of state

completed or habitual event

Chinese * completed event

The L3 group in this study consisted of 32 Chinese natives in Taiwan who were studying

Spanish and had studied English as an L2. Twenty-one participants, however, were eliminated

either because they were not accurate on distracters or because they scored around 50%, or

chance, on the main test. This fact in itself is important since these learners must have been

genuinely puzzled by the test. There was also a L1 English à L2 Spanish group of another 11

participants, plus 11 controls. The L2 and the L3 Spanish group were at intermediate proficiency

as ascertained by a cloze test; the L2 group scored 57.8% and the L3 group scored 52.8%, which

were not statistically different.

Following Slabakova (2001) and Montrul and Slabakova (2002), participants were given

a knowledge of aspectual morphology test. In this task, they had to select from two options the

correct form of the verb in the past, as the example below shows:

(2) El jefe le daba/dio el dinero a la empleada para depositarlo en el banco. La

empleada trabajó/trabajaba para la compañía pero no estuvo/estaba contenta con

su trabajo y quiso/quería otro trabajo. . . .


‘The boss gave the money to the employee to be deposited in the bank. The

employee worked for the company but was not happy with her job and wanted

another job . . .’

The main test was designed to check for sensitivity to the semantic contrast between the

Preterit and Imperfect. Each test item consisted of two related sentences. Participants had to

judge whether the sentences went together well or not, that is, whether the sequence of events

was logical (the correct answer is in bold).

(3) Pedro pintaba dos cuadros. Pedro no terminó el segundo cuadro.

Pedro paint-IMP.3sg two paintings. Pedro NEG finish-PRET.3sg the second painting

‘Pedro was painting two paintings. Pedro did not finish the second painting.’

1 2 3 4 5

Unacceptable Acceptable

(4) Las niñas pintaron dos cuadros. Las niñas no terminaron el segundo

The girls paint-PRET.3pl two paintings. The girls NEG finish-PRET.3sg the second

cuadro.

painting

‘The girls painted two paintings. The girls did not finish the second painting.’

1 2 3 4 5

Unacceptable Acceptable

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If the participants interpreted the verb in the Imperfect tense (the imperfective grammatical

aspect) to refer to an ongoing event, then the second sentence in (3) denoting that the event was

not finished would not be a logical contradiction. The expected rating would be 5. If, on the other

hand, participants interpreted correctly the Preterit to refer to a complete event, the rejection of

that event would be a contradiction, rated with a 1.

Figures 2-4 illustrate the acceptance rate of states, accomplishments and achievements

(respectively) in the Preterit and Imperfect tenses.

Figure 2: Acceptance rate of states

1

2

3

4

5

Spanish natives E -‐> Sp Ch -‐> E -‐> Sp

Imperfective

Perfective


Figure 3: Acceptance rates of accomplishments

Figure 4: Acceptance rates of achievements

When rating states, neither of the learner groups perceived the semantic contrast in

aspectual meanings; when rating accomplishments and achievements, only the L2 group did but

the L3 groups did not. Furthermore, the judgments of the learners hover around the mid line of

2.5 to 3. At the same time, these learners did very well on the distracters, suggesting that they

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understood the test. It appears that the learners’ L3 grammars do not distinguish these aspectual

meanings, at this time. Why would that be? Let’s consider their morphology scores. The E à Sp

group scores were at 75.7% and the Ch à E à Sp group at 70.2% accuracy on the morphology

test. However, this difference is not statistically significant, indicating that whatever differences

we have seen between the groups are due to their native languages.

Let’s look at the contrasts and the lack of contrasts in the aspectual knowledge of the

learners. The L2 group had not acquired the contrast in states, and that is precisely where the

English-Spanish mismatch resides. Parts of Tables 1, 2 and 3 are repeated below for easy

reference.

States:



English temporary state state

On the other hand, the Chinese L1, English L2 learners of L3 Spanish demonstrate that all

contrasts are hard for them. This is because there are form-meaning mismatches in all the lexical

classes between Spanish and Chinese meanings and morphemes:

States:



Chinese state initiation of state


Accomplishments


Spanish ongoing event completed event

Chinese ongoing event terminated event

Achievements:


Spanish activity leading up to change of state

completed event

Chinese * completed event

Let us check how the current L2A theories can explain these findings. The Interface

Hypothesis does not make any concrete predictions in this learning situation, since the learners

are at intermediate proficiency and the properties to be learned are at the syntax-semantics

interface. While the Interface Hypothesis predicts that properties at this interface are learnable in

principle, these particular learners may not be that advanced as yet. The Interpretability

Hypothesis would also predict that acquisition of these aspectual contrasts is learnable, since

they are arguably regulated by interpretable aspectual features. Where both these models come

short, however, is in explaining the exact pattern of the data obtained. Why would both learner

groups be unsuccessful on states in the Preterit and Imperfect, while only the L3 group fails to

recognize the aspectual contrast with accomplishments and achievements? These experimental

findings demonstrate clearly the value of the Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis in providing an

explanation: the more reassembly of features, in this case interpretable grammatical meanings

mapping onto forms, the harder the acquisition of semantic contrasts is. Furthermore, it could be

the case that the participants’ morpheme recognition, at around 70% on an easy test, was not yet

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sufficient to bring in the aspectual semantics. The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis makes the

correct prediction for this learning situation. Furthermore, the findings of this experiment suggest

that if no (aspectual tense) morphology is acquired, then no (aspectual tense) semantics is

acquired, a situation anticipated by the Bottleneck Hypothesis. The next study that I discuss

speaks to the latter issue.

3.2. Foote (2009)

Foote (2009) looks at very similar aspectual knowledge and uses the same type of test, a

sentence conjunction judgment task, following Slabakova (2001) and a morphology test

following Montrul and Slabakova (2002). That is why the comparison with Chin’s (2008) study

will be profitable. Foote’s research questions capitalize on the similarity between Romance

languages in the aspectual tense domain and differences from English. Her participants included

native speakers of English learning Romance languages as L2 and L3 (a mix of French, Spanish

and Italian) (n=14), a group of Romance native speakers with English as an L2 and another

Romance language as L3. There were also control groups and an L1 English à L2 Romance

group. Since French, Italian and Spanish are very similar with respect to the meaning of their

grammatical aspect morphemes, the author felt it was appropriate to collapse these languages.

Foote used a Likert scale of -2 to +2 with “I don’t know” as a separate option. Figures 5 to 7

present the acceptance ratings of the three lexical classes that we saw in Chin (2008), states,

accomplishments and achievements, with perfective and imperfective grammatical aspect

marking.


Figure 5: Mean acceptability of states

Figure 6: Mean acceptability of accomplishments

L1R L1E-‐L2R

L1E-‐L2R-‐L3R (L2)

L1E-‐L2R-‐L3R (L3)

L1R-‐L2E-‐L3R (L3)

Imperfective (OK) 1.6 0.41 1.04 1.09 1.66 Perfective (#) -‐1.41 -‐0.22 -‐1.38 -‐1.02 -‐1.29

-‐2

-‐1.5

-‐1

-‐0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Imperfective (OK)

Perfective (#)

L1R L1E-‐L2R L1E-‐

L2R-‐L3R (L2)

L1E-‐L2R-‐L3R (L3)

L1R-‐L2E-‐L3R (L3)

Imperfective (OK) 1.16 0.86 1.47 1.09 1.2 Perfective (#) -‐1.14 -‐0.42 -‐1.62 -‐1.53 -‐1.54

-‐2

-‐1.5

-‐1

-‐0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Imperfective (OK)

Perfective (#)

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Figure 7: Mean acceptability of achievements

All contrasts throughout the experimental findings are significant. This suggests that all

learners distinguish between the illogical combination of a perfective tense with a negating

second clause and the logical combination of an imperfective clause combined with eventuality

negation. Still, there are interesting things to notice in the data. First of all, it seems that there is a

definite advantage of knowing one Romance language when learning another, even for the

learners’ second Romance language. Compare the second and third columns in the figures above.

If English is the L2 and Romance languages are L1 and L3, English seems to have no effect on

acceptability ratings. Compare the fourth and fifth column. That is, both L1 and L2 aspectual

meanings can be transferred equally well. The important thing to notice is that, among Romance

languages, there is no real reassembly of features to be done, just new morphemes to be mapped

onto the existing ones. Furthermore, the L2 Romance group is most insecure on states. This is

L1R L1E-‐L2R L1E-‐

L2R-‐L3R (L2)

L1E-‐L2R-‐L3R (L3)

L1R-‐L2E-‐L3R (L3)

Imperfective (OK) 0.92 0.77 1.2 0.85 1 Perfective (#) -‐1.74 -‐0.9 -‐1.75 -‐1.6 -‐1.4

-‐2

-‐1.5

-‐1

-‐0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Imperfective (OK)

Perfective (#)


because the English past progressive can only mean a temporary state (e.g., I was being lazy)

while Romance imperfective with states denotes a characteristic state.4 Again, we see uncertainly

and lower ratings where feature reassembly is going on in the grammar.

Individual results confirm both observations. This is how they were calculated. For every

answer of 1 and 2 on imperfective sentences (logical with a negating second clause) 1 point was

given, for every -1 and -2 on perfective sentences (illogical when negated) 1 point was given. 30

test sentences gave a maximum 30 points, which was converted into a percentage. Individuals

from the E à R à R group were removed from counting who did not score over 75% on their

L2 aspect test, as well as everyone who had scored lower than 75% on the morphology. After

these participants were removed, the overall accuracy of the groups on the sentence conjunction

judgment task was as given in the last column of Table 4. Individual results are in the second and

third columns.

Table 4: Number of individuals scoring above 75% on SCJT and recalculated group accuracy

Number/group n Percentage Recalculated group accuracy

L1E à L2R 3/14 21.4 65%

L1E à L2R à L3R 8/10 80 86.3%

L1R à L2E à L3R 6/11 54.5 81.2%

Note that, according to these results, the biggest advantage in interpreting grammatical

aspect correctly is actually speaking a Romance language as second, not as a first language.

Foote (2009) explains this state of affairs with heightened awareness of the semantic importance

of the aspectual morphology in a second Romance language in learning the third, and I agree

4 As well as temporary state if supported by context or discourse.

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20

with her. Considering Foote’s and Chin’s results together, we can establish what type of learning

situation leads to successful acquisition. If L1 transfer of interpretable features is possible and

fairly direct, then acquisition will be easier and accomplished earlier, with fewer errors. If

transfer of interpretable features is not possible and a lot of feature reassembly is required, this

learning situation will create a lot of difficulty, learning will be delayed and error-prone.

Furthermore, the Bottleneck Hypothesis would predict that, morphology being the bottleneck of

acquisition, the aspectual contrasts would be acquired only after the aspectual morphology is

acquired. This prediction is addressed by the individual results in Foote’s study. Since the author

eliminated participants scoring lower than 75% on the aspectual morphology test, it can be

assumed that the remaining individuals were aware of the aspectual morphology. Within these

“morphology-proficient” groups, there is still a lot of variability on the semantic contrast: e.g.,

within the L2 Romance group, individual scores range between 26.7% and 93.3%, with an

average of 65% (see Table 4 above). In the E à R à R group, individual scores on the aspectual

contrast range between 53.3% and 100%, with an average of 86.5%. The same range is valid for

the R à E à R group, with an average of 81.2%. These results suggest that the semantic

aspectual contrasts are acquired only after the morphology is in place, i.e., accessed and used

correctly.

As discussed in the previous section, the Interface Hypothesis and the Interpretability

Hypothesis do not make direct predictions with respect to the acquisition of aspectual

morphology. They also fail to explain the successes and the failures of Chin’s and Foote’s

experimental participants. This could be because these two acquisition models make too big-

brush distinctions: between external and internal interfaces, between interpretable and


uninterpretable features, broadly speaking.5 In these two experiments, we have seen that not all

semantic contrasts at the syntax-semantics interface, an internal interface, are acquired equally

well. If we accept a theory of the grammar where all aspectual meanings correspond to features

(as in Giorgi & Pianesi, 1997), these experiments also show that not all interpretable features are

acquired equally well. These patterns of findings indicate that we need more small-brush, detail-

oriented theories of L2 and L3 acquisition. It seems that, at least with respect to the learning

situations discussed here, the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis and the Bottleneck Hypothesis fit

the bill.

3.3. Montrul, Dias & Santos (2011)

While Chin (2008) and Foote (2009) focused on the syntax-semantics interface and

knowledge of aspectual interpretations, the next study discussed examines L3A of various

syntactic features. The authors seek experimental evidence for knowledge of clitics in Brazilian

Portuguese (BP) as a third language. We will concentrate here on the second part of the Montrul

et al. study, the acceptability judgment study, and we will zoom in on those properties involving

uninterpretable features. We shall look at knowledge of clitic placement with finite and non-

finite verbs and in restructuring contexts, that is, auxiliaries (modal, perceptual or causative finite

verb) in combination with infinitives. Let us look briefly at the data.

5 In addition, the matter of exactly which features are interpretable and which are uninterpretable is not yet definitively settled.

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Brazilian Portuguese (spoken) Spanish

(5) a. Me olhou e não disse nada. c. Me miró y no dijo nada.

CL1sg looked and not said anything CL1sg looked and not said anything

‘He looked at me and did not say anything.’ ‘He looked at me and did not say

anything.’

Brazilian Portuguese (formal register) Spanish

b. Olhou -me e não disse nada. d. *Miró-me y no dijo nada.

looked - CL1sg and not said anything looked CL1sg and not said anything

‘He looked at me and did not say anything.’ ‘He looked at me and did not say

anything.’

In spoken BP, preverbal clitics are the norm. Enclisis is found with finite verbs,

especially when the verb is in the absolute first position (V1). Examples (5a) and (5b) show both

possibilities in BP. In Spanish, by contrast, only the preverbal position is grammatical regardless

of person or register, as in (5c) and (5d).

A similar situation obtains with non-finite verbs (infinitives and gerunds). BP optionally

places the 1st or 2nd person clitic before or after the non-finite verb (6a,b). The tendency,

however, is to place 1st and 2nd person clitics before the non-finite form (proclisis) (6b), but in

some contexts and due to prescriptive rules, the pronoun is sometimes used after the verb

(enclisis) (6a). Once again, postverbal clitics appear mostly in formal texts. Spanish clitics must

follow the verb, and the preverbal position is ungrammatical (6c,d).


Brazilian Portuguese (formal register) Spanish

(6) a . . . . para receber-nos. c.. . . . para recibirnos.

to welcome- CL1pl to welcome- CL1pl

‘to welcome us.’ ‘to welcome us.’

Brazilian Portuguese (spoken) Spanish

b. . . . para nos receber. d. . . .*para nos recibir.

. . . to CL1pl welcome . . . to CL1pl welcome

‘to welcome us.’ ‘to welcome us.’

In restructuring constructions there are three possible positions for clitics: (1) proclisis to

the auxiliary or finite verb (clitic climbing, 7a,c), (2) proclisis to the nonfinite lexical verb

(middle position, 7b,e) or (3) enclisis to the nonfinite lexical (no climbing, 7c,f).

Brazilian Portuguese Spanish

(7) a. *João se vai levantar. d. Juan se va a levantar.

João refl. is going to get up Juan refl. is going to get up

‘João is going to get up.’ ‘Juan is going to get up.’

b. João vai se levantar. e. *Juan va a se levantar.

João is going to refl. get up Juan is going to refl. get up


c. João vai levantar-se. f. Juan va a levantarse.

João is going to get up refl. Juan is going to get up refl.


Roumyana Slabakova

24

All of these properties have been related in the literature to the operation of strong or

weak uninterpretable features. The movement of the finite verb before the clitic is explained as

verb movement to a higher than IP functional position with strong features (Pires 2005;

Uriagereka 1995). Kayne (1991) argues that infinitives in Spanish and Italian have strong

agreement features and move past the clitic. Clitics invariably left-adjoin to a functional head

(IP), and the order V-CL in infinitives results from the V having moved upwards. In French and

BP, agreement in non-finite forms is weak, the non-finite verb does not move, and clitics precede

the verb. Finally, Kayne (1989) relates clitic climbing to a value of the pro-drop parameter and

the strength of agreement in different Romance languages. If a language has null subjects

(Spanish, Italian), it will have clitic climbing; if Infl is not strong enough to identify null subjects

as in French, the language will not have clitic climbing. BP used to be like Spanish but today

behaves more like French. Under Kayne’s proposal, Spanish (and Italian) select the strong value

of INFL (or Agr) and French (and BP) take the weak one. Therefore, for all three properties, we

are looking at transfer of different uninterpretable features. Table 5 from Montrul et al. (their

Table 1) summarizes the differences.

Table 5: Cross-linguistic differences in clitic placement between Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish

and English. (Example numbers appear in parentheses.)

Brazilian Portuguese Spanish English

finite verbs preverbal/ postverbal (6 a,b) preverbal (5c,d) --

non-finite verbs preverbal/postverbal (7a,b) postverbal (6c,d) --

clitic climbing no (7a) yes (7d) --

middle position yes (7b) no (7e) --

lowest position yes (7c) yes (7f) --


In addition, there are differences in person that are interestingly related. Proclisis

(preverbal clitics) is mainly used in spoken language, while both enclisis and proclisis positions

are more frequent in the written variety (Kato, Cyrino & Corrêa 2009). While clitic climbing is

not allowed in BP with 1st and 2nd person, it is not completely ungrammatical with 3rd person.

One reason why the behavior of 3rd person clitics is different from that of 1st and 2nd person is

that BP is losing 3rd person clitics, especially in the colloquial spoken variety. Notice the

availability of options for clitic placement and the wide variability when we take person, various

oral and written registers into account. Table 6 from Montrul et al. (their Table 2), summarizes

the variability in clitic placement.

Table 6. Summary of internal variability in Brazilian Portuguese clitic placement

Spoken Brazilian Portuguese Formal Brazilian Portuguese

1st person 2nd person 3rd person 1st person 2nd person 3rd person

finite verbs preverbal preverbal -- preverbal

postverbal

preverbal

postverbal

preverbal

postverbal

nonfinite verbs preverbal preverbal -- preverbal

postverbal

preverbal

postverbal

postverbal

clitic climbing no no -- no no some

middle position yes yes -- yes yes no no climbing no no -- yes yes yes

As mentioned above, Study 2 in Montrul et al. (2011) used an acceptability judgment

task. Participants included intermediate level learners of BP at Illinois and native controls. One

learner group was English-native and spoke Spanish as an L2; the other was Spanish-native and

had very good knowledge of English. Proficiency was independently estimated in Study 2 and it

Roumyana Slabakova

26

turned out that the Spanish L1 group (Sp à E à BP) was significantly more proficient in BP

than the English-native group (E à Sp à BP).

Study 1 utilized three elicited production tasks and detected some non-target-like usage

of clitic placement that suggested transfer from Spanish for both learner groups. Study 2,

therefore, probed deeper into knowledge of clitic placement with written stimuli. Within the 128-

sentence acceptability judgment task, there were 4 tokens each of clitics standing for 1st person,

2nd person, 3rd person animate and 3rd person inanimate objects in Cl-V and V-Cl orders with

finite and non-finite verbs and in all three possible clitic restructuring positions. Participants

judged acceptability on a scale of 1 (impossible) to 4 (perfectly acceptable), with a separate “I

don’t know” option. For the statistical analysis, acceptability of 1st and 2nd person was collapsed,

as well as 3rd inanimate with 3rd animate.

Figure 8: Finite verbs: mean acceptability ratings on postverbal clitics.

In the charts that follow, I will only focus on properties that the learners had to

restructure, that is, the ones which are different in Spanish and BP. Figure 8 shows the

3.31 3.27

2.72.85

3.15 3.15

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

V-1,2PCl V-3PCl

Portuguese

English

Spanish


acceptance of clitic placement with finite verbs. Statistical analysis (factorial ANOVA) reveals

no main effect for person, no main effect for group and no significant interactions. This suggests

that both learner groups had converged on this grammatical property: they have reset the verb

movement out of IP parameter to allow it in BP although their native or L2 Spanish disallows it.

Figure 9 presents the results of preverbal clitics with infinitives. These are grammatical

with 1st and 2nd person clitics but ungrammatical with 3rd person clitics in BP (see Table 6).

Preverbal clitics with infinitives are ungrammatical in Spanish, regardless of person.

Figure 9. Non-finite verbs: mean acceptability ratings on preverbal clitics.

The results clearly show that for the Brazilian native speakers there is a sharp contrast

between the grammaticality of 1st and 2nd versus 3rd person clitics, but the non-native speakers do

not display such pattern. In fact, the two groups are not very sure about these sentences, perhaps

influenced by the Spanish pattern.

3.94

2.522.68 2.66

2.97

2.55

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

1,2PCl-V 3PCl-V

Portuguese

English

Spanish

Roumyana Slabakova

28

Finally, Figure 10 presents the results of clitic climbing. Only the Brazilian native

speakers distinguished reliably between 1st, 2nd vs. 3rd person clitics, but the learner groups did

not. Both with 1st, 2nd person clitics and with 3rd person clitics, there was a significant difference

between the native Brazilians and the two learner groups. That is, both the English speakers and

the Spanish speakers accepted clitic climbing more than the Brazilian speakers, a grammatical

option in Spanish. In the two cases, the English speakers and the Spanish speakers did not differ

from each other (see the actual statistics in the original publication).

Figure 10. Restructuring contexts: mean acceptability ratings on clitic climbing.

To summarize, we looked at a subset of data from Montrul et al. (2011) where syntactic

theory has postulated that the differences between Spanish and BP are due to various

uninterpretable features. We determined that L1 and L2 Spanish speakers learning BP as an L3

have managed to restructure clitic placement knowledge with finite verbs but not with non-finite

verbs and not in restructuring contexts.

1.6

2.15

2.87

2.52

3.182.98

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

1,2P Cl 3P Cl

Portuguese

English

Spanish


There are some very interesting implications of these findings for the theories we are

discussing. First of all, let us comment on the remarkable similarity between the two learner

groups’ patterns of knowledge. Recall that one group contained Spanish natives while the other

contained Anglophones with knowledge of Spanish as an L2. While transfer from their native

language is not so surprising for the L1 Spanish group, it is perhaps unexpected to see strong

transfer from the L2 Spanish in the Anglophone group performance. As Montrul et al. submit,

this finding supports Rothman’s (2011) Typological Primacy Model (see also Rothman &

Cabrelli-Amaro, 2010). This model suggests that transfer is constrained by either actual

typological proximity or perceived typological proximity (the so called psycho-typological

proximity). Note that knowledge of Spanish is not helping in this particular learning situation.

Spanish clitic placement actually differs from BP clitic placement in all three situations we

discussed above, arguably due to three different parameters. Thus, we are left with perceived

typological proximity as one possible explanation.

How does the Interpretability Hypothesis of Tsimpli and Hawkins fare with this data?

Recall that this theoretical hypothesis would predict that uninterpretable features can be acquired

neither in the L2 nor in the L3. Of the three properties operated by uninterpretable features, clitic

placement with (1) finite verbs; (2) non-finite verbs; and (3) in restructuring contexts, the first

property has been acquired in a target-like manner while the second and third have not. These

findings are supportive of the Interpretability Hypothesis in one part and a blow to it in another

part. Even more interesting, if the Anglophone learners of BP have been able to transfer Spanish

clitic placement, this means that they have successfully restructured it in their L2 grammar,

counter to the Interpretability Hypothesis’ claims. Note, however, that none of the L2 theories

and the L3 theories that we have been discussing is capable of accounting for the interesting

Roumyana Slabakova

30

pattern of transfer attested in this study: both from the L1 and the L2 and psycho-typology based

(although misleading), but not for all properties that could have been affected. Again, we clearly

need a more nuanced position here. However, in this particular case, the previously successful

Feature Reassembly Hypothesis and Bottleneck Hypothesis do not do much better than the

Interpretability Hypothesis. The properties to be acquired involve a similar amount of feature

reassembly and inflectional morphology; still they are acquired at different rates. We need to

take into account something else: learners’ development and frequency of evidence in the input

to the learners.

I am referring here to Charles Yang’s position on the dependency between parameter

resetting and evidence for a parameter value in the input to which the learners are exposed (Yang

2002; Legate & Yang 2007). According to this position, called the Variational Learning

Hypothesis, the rate of acquisition of parameter values depends on the percentage of sentences in

the overall input to the learners that exhibit evidence for the value. This hypothesis can be

extended to second (Slabakova, 2008) and third language acquisition. The learners in this study

were at intermediate levels of proficiency, thus all of the clitic placement options in BP may still

be acquired. But arguably the one property that is acquired, clitic placement with finite verbs, is

most abundant in the input, while clitic climbing in restructuring contexts is much rarer, and

subject to optionality even in near-native grammars (Sorace, 1993). Most importantly, the

pervasive variability within oral and written BP is clearly a formidable obstacle that nevertheless

has been overcome by the learners.

Finally, the Interface Hypothesis is not directly addressed by the Montrul et al. (2011)

findings. The core-syntactic properties of clitic placement, however, are not acquired to the same

extent, and as we argued above, the Interface Hypothesis is too big-brush to explain the pattern


of acquisition. However, there is some evidence in study 1 for pragmatically illicit production of

null objects, which would be an indication of trouble at the syntax-discourse interface as well as

in core syntax.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

In this article, we looked at three relatively sophisticated L3A studies from the small literature on

the issue to date, which eschew the previously remarked-upon shortcomings of being ad hoc, not

addressing genuine L3A research questions and not having experimental and control groups (see

Montrul et al. 2011: 24). Two of these studies addressed properties at the syntax-semantics

interface and the last one addressed core syntactic properties. With respect to the semantic

contrasts studied in Chin (2008) and Foote (2009), we saw that the Interface Hypothesis and the

Interpretability Hypothesis could not explain the pattern of findings because they were not

nuanced enough to capture differential acquisition. The Feature Reassembly and the Bottleneck

Hypotheses were supported by those findings. For the same reason of lack of detailed

differentiation in predictions, the Interface Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis were

not helpful in explaining the findings of the last study discussed in this chapter, that of Montrul

et al. (2001). However, the Feature Reassembly and the Bottleneck Hypotheses were also found

wanting with respect to that study’s findings, and it was argued that frequency of evidence in the

input to learners also has to be taken into account, as suggested by the Variability Hypothesis.

More generally speaking, to the question of whether L2A theories can give us explanations of

patterns of multilingual acquisition, the answer appears to be that some L2A theories (The

Feature Reassembly and the Bottleneck Hypotheses) can go a long way in explaining (at least

these) L3A findings. The Interface Hypothesis proved incapable of explaining the acquisition of

Roumyana Slabakova

32

properties that are not at the external syntax-discourse interface. The Interpretability Hypothesis,

while not fully supported, appears useful in predicting difficulty, just not insurmountable

difficulty. However, none of the four theories were able to fully explain the data, so salience and

construction frequency in the input had to be added to the relevant explanations.

The “existential” question hotly debated in the L3A literature is the source of L3 transfer:

whether acquisition of a third language is influenced by the L1, or by the L2, or by some

combination thereof (see e.g., articles in the Second Language Research 2011 special issue).

Furthermore, is this transfer to be expected in the initial state only, or in subsequent development

as well? I believe my discussion of which L2 theories can explain the L3 findings is relevant to

the issue of L1 or L2 transfer. The latter question is clearly answered in the (small subset of

three) studies whose findings we examined: both the L1 and the L2 are important and can be

transferred from. Now, the more important conceptual issue is whether this L1 or L2 influence is

pervasive across the board, or selective, in the sense that some properties transfer from the L1

and some others transfer from the L2. Even more importantly, what might this selectivity depend

on?

I would like to argue for the Modular Transfer Hypothesis, namely, what transfers is

primarily and essentially dependent on the intrinsic difficulty of the linguistic property. Thus,

Leung’s (2005, 2006) strong claim about full transfer of the typologically most similar language

to the L3 initial state has to be modified with respect to modularity. What transfers is not

“grammar” as a whole, whether the L1 grammar or the L2 grammar, but parts of grammar; that

is, all principles and those parametric values that are useful in accounting for the L3 input. I do

not mean to say that the learner makes a conscious choice of L1 or L2 influence with respect to

some property. Language acquisition is a largely unconscious process. When faced with some


construction in the L3 input that she cannot parse and/or interpret, the learner of a third/n-th

language has two (or more) previously acquired grammars at her disposal, and can make use of

the whole arsenal of features, functional categories and processes that are instantiated in these

grammars. In a sense, learning a second language increases one’s linguistic repertoire, and that

increased knowledge is brought to bear on subsequent language acquisition.

Essential difficulties to transfer from any language, L1 or L2, are: (1) form to meaning

inflectional morphology mismatches (or misleading mappings) as predicted by the Feature

Reassembly Hypothesis and the Bottleneck Hypothesis; (2) poverty or excessive variability of

evidence for a certain parameter value in the input to learners, as highlighted by the Variability

Hypothesis. The more straightforward the mapping and the more consistent the input to learners,

the easier the transfer will be. But this transfer cannot be wholesale (L1 or L2), if it is to take into

account mappings and input consistency.

Finally, I believe the current L3A theories are still too big-brush at this time to be able to

explain nuanced findings and development. Let me reiterate that what transfers is probably not

“a grammar” but significant parts of grammar, those that are useful in parsing and

comprehending the L3 input. Transfer is certainly modular, and probably goes property by

property. Finally, transfer can be affected by psycho-typology; that is, transfer from a perceived

typologically-related language may prove to be misleading.

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l3/ln acquisition: a view from the outside

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