Root Infinitives in L2 – Supplement

Are there optional infinitives in child L2 acquisition? Belma Haznedar & Bonnie D. Shwartz

Research question Is there a phase in early child L2 acquisition in which inflection is ‘optional’, and if there is – whether a link exists between the form of the verb and the occurrence of null subjects?

Method This research is based on one child’s data Erdem, 4;3 years old, native speaker of Turkish who was exposed to English before he moved in the UK(November 1993). Spent 2 first months at the UK at home with his Turkish speaking parents. When data collection started(February 1994) it was already a month after starting nursery school( English-only), 2.5 hours a day. He received no formal English language instruction. His first English utterances at the beginning were only nouns- mostly names of animals(dog, cat, tiger, lion, pig, duck etc.) In Erdem’s data auxiliaries be\do and copula be appear fairly early in contrast to main verb tense and agreement inflection. Data collected in a period of 18 months, three times a month.

The Data- Inflected vs. uninflected verb forms For inflection the looked at past tense verbs in obligatory contexts and 3sg present tense. They counted a verb as inflected if it has overt inflection( 3sg -s, regular –ed past, or irregular past) and as uninflected if overt inflection is missing in an obligatory context. First observation: similar to L1 English child, Erdem sometimes produces inflection and sometimes doesn’t.Examples: 1.a. She just said please please don’t make noise. b. I want my mummy to hold me, she say. 2.a. She want to make a window. b. She wants to eat this lemon # I think.

The data Table 1: verb form and null subjects: samples 8-12 Erdem Samples 8-12   uninflected inflected overt subject 9/29 31.03% 0/0 0% null subject 20/29 68.97% Table 2: verb form and null subjects: samples 8-46 Erdem Samples 8-46   uninflected inflected overt subject 1193/1222 97.63% 875/875 100% null subject 29/1222 2.37% 0/875 0% In sum we see that null subjects drop out long before uninflected forms do. Moreover,Edrem never produces null subjects with the inflected form of the verb, and this is distinct from what the L1 acquisition data exhibit.

Additional findings Few examples of subject-verb agreement errors: Use of agreement: Few examples of subject-verb agreement errors: This two fits, and this fits. The cats come goes with him. George and Arnie always fights. They eats you. Erdem used 3sg –s correctly 421 times with only 12 errors(12/433). This fact indicate that verbal agreement morphology is not random.

Additional findings Use of inflection: Few examples of errors in producing inflection form: If it stucks the car’s wheel # # car can’t go. They throw it and it’s brokes. She saws a house. He fells in he fells down but sonic the hedgehog doesn’t. Erdem rarely produces the wrong form of inflection. There were only 4 instances of such error, all with irregular past tense verbs. All together the findings show that agreement morphology is not used randomly . Despite the fact that Erdem omits 3sg –s in hundreds of utterances, but when it does present it is almost always used correctly.

Additional findings Nominative pronominal subjects: In Erdem’s data almost all pronominal subjects are nominative. Only 3 subject pronouns are incorrectly realized(as accusative): Investigator: You’ve finished Erdem: Me is finish.. Investigator: It’s a very big and fat spider Erdem: This is not # me big me very very. Investigator: You’re going to break that bicycle. Eredem: No # me not break this bicycle.

Extended optional infinitive in English of children with SLI (Rice & Wexler 1995) Morphemes checked: 3rd person –s, past tense –ed, copula & auxiliary BE, and DO. Procedure: natural language samples + probe procedure aimed at elicitation (playing with toys). Subjects: SLI, N3 (language matched by MLU), N5 (age matched)

Findings - Percentage correct probes and spontaneous speech

Children in the SLI group showed a lower level of use in obligatory context than children in either control groups. N5 used the morphemes over 90% of the times, while SLI used them in 25%-48% of the time. N3 where in between (45%-70%) Error of use are very rare (SLI accuracy of agreement for probe data is like N3: 94% with BE, 82% with DO) Other morphemes, e.g., plural, are almost at normal level Prepositions are intact >> Tense marking is optional for a protracted period of time

Paradis & Crago 2000 While children with SLI tend to omit the auxiliary in past or future periphrastic verb constructions, L2 children substitute the auxiliary with the base or present tense form.

Paradis. 2008 only L2 children generalize the use of BE, in order to fill a gap between their communicative demands and their knowledge of the L2 with a morphosyntactic expression. Both the high proportions of commission errors and the overgeneralization of BE single out L2 children from children with SLI.