Abstract
This volume is a collection of papers selected from the Seventh Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America (GALANA), held in September 2016, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. GALANA is the North American branch of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA), held primarily in Europe. These sister conferences, taking place in alternating years, are premier international conferences on language acquisition research from a generative perspective. The Seventh GALANA, supported by the National Science Foundation, features ‘variation in input’ as its special theme. Examination of variation in input constitutes one of the ‘three streams of generative language acquisition research’ that the volume title refers to. The other two streams are children’s first language acquisition and adults’ second language acquisition. The volume is organized into three major sections, each of which includes selected papers related to these three themes.
Part I. Variation in input represents the conference’s special theme, including papers discussing the role of language variation and input in language acquisition. Generative language acquisition research argues for domain-specific, innate linguistic knowledge (Universal Grammar), which consists of principles (abstract grammatical rules) and parameters (a set of binary values that determine representational variation across languages) (Chomsky, 1981). Initially, the role of input was discussed as a trigger for parameter setting, a mechanism of learning ‘peripheral’ (Chomsky, 1981) properties of a particular language. Later, researchers started to discuss new mechanisms of language learning through which input guides learners to a target parameter value in a more nuanced way than a traditional trigger-based binary value setting (e.g., Gibson & Wexler, 1994); these mechanisms have come to play an important role in the generativist model of language acquisition (e.g., Legate & Yang, 2007). This section is dedicated to showing recent findings regarding the way in which ‘[v]ariation in input that is the result of a socio-linguistically based variable rule’ (p. 2) may affect the developmental trajectory of children’s acquisition of ‘peripheral’ properties in their target grammar. Barrière, Kresh, Aharodnik, Legendre, and Nazzi investigate the 3rd person singular morpheme, -s, in child speakers of mainstream and non-mainstream North American English dialects, controlling for socioeconomic background to identify potential effects of dialectal variation. Findings suggest that the dialectal variability in the input that children receive does indeed modulate the developmental pattern of the 3rd person singular morpheme. Miller reviews a body of research on children’s acquisition of morphological representations that are subject to sociolinguistic variation in English and Spanish. She claims that morphemes produced more variably may be acquired later than those produced less variably, but children receiving variable input and those receiving non-variable input exhibit the same developmental trajectory overall. Oetting reviews studies that examine linguistic variability stemming from dialectal factors (differences among mainstream and non-mainstream dialects) both between and within groups of typically-developing children and those with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). She claims that dialectal factors constitute a more robust source of variability in typical language development than in impaired language development. The papers in this section, hence, reveal an emerging picture of the factors contributing to variability in input that influence children’s language development in complex ways, underscoring the need for further research in this domain.
Part II. First language acquisition, as the name suggests, includes papers on children’s first language acquisition, a central theme of generative language acquisition research. The papers discuss a variety of linguistic representations and phenomena, spanning wh-questions (de Villiers, Kotfila, & Klein), verb raising (Mateu & Hyams), compound words (Isobe & Okabe), the semantics of adjectives (Weicker & Schulz), disjunction (Gao, Thornton, Zhou, & Crain; Huang, Thornton, & Crain), and quantification and aspect (Lei & Lee). The languages of research include English, Spanish, German, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and Japanese. Findings from studies included in this section, which examine children’s awareness of rule-governed grammatical properties in a variety of languages, advance traditional lines of literature on generative first language acquisition research. For example, Mateu and Hyams investigate verb raising in English and Spanish to better probe the source of children’s attested difficulty with verb raising (e.g., Hirsch & Wexler, 2007). They provide a new piece of cross-linguistic evidence in favor of the claim that the locus of the difficulty is in the intervention effect caused by an experiencer argument (e.g., Snyder & Hyams, 2015). Findings reported in this section also shed light on the importance of better understanding the role of developmental factors and individual differences among children in first language acquisition. De Villiers et al. examine how children comprehend multi-clause wh-questions (in which the adjunct wh-operator can be attached either to the matrix clause or to the embedded clause), a long-lasting research question in the literature, in tandem with measures of children’s general development in vocabulary, syntax, and learning of new items. Their findings reveal that individual differences in these measures, independently of age, are associated with children’s comprehension of multi-clause wh-questions. De Villiers et al.’s paper illustrates how uniting traditional lines of generative research with the examination of individual differences in development can help illuminate the acquisition/development of core grammar.
Part III. Second language acquisition consists of a set of papers discussing factors that are argued to affect adult second language acquisition, yielding new findings from a range of languages. Choi, Zhu, and Ionin discuss effects of L1 transfer, which impact the learning of grammatical marking of the count–mass distinction in English nouns by native speakers of classifier languages that do not grammatically mark the count–mass distinction. Gonzalez Darriba reveals a proficiency effect in native English speakers’ learning of word order among auxiliaries, verbs, and adverbs in Spanish, an L1–L2 pairing between which word order constitutes a parametric contrast. Papers in this section also highlight a trend to examine a wider range of learner populations. Chen examines local and long-distance binding of Mandarin reflexives in heritage speakers, adult L2 learners, and native Mandarin speakers. The results reveal that heritage speakers of Mandarin with English as a dominant language outperform English-speaking L2 learners of Mandarin in rejecting long-distance binding of taziji, a reflexive which allows only local binding in Mandarin. On the other hand, neither heritage speakers nor L2 learners exhibit knowledge of long-distance binding for ziji, a reflexive which allows both local and long-distance binding in Mandarin. Koulidobrova examines argument omission in unimodal sequential sign-language bilinguals. Deaf and hard-of-hearing users of two sign languages, both of which allow argument omission, exhibit a tendency to oversupply overt arguments in their less dominant language, a pattern that has been reported for spoken-language bilinguals (e.g., Sorace et al., 2009). The section concludes with a paper by Slabakova addressing a central debate regarding the extent to which Universal Grammar may contribute to adult second language acquisition. She revisits the Bottleneck Hypothesis (e.g., Slabakova, 2008), which argues that functional morphology presents a fundamental challenge in adult second language acquisition due to its nature as a package of features determining representations of ‘peripheral’ properties of the target language. Reviewing recent findings, she reports additional factors that complicate the acquisition of functional morphology. Slabakova argues that findings supporting the Bottleneck Hypothesis are consistent with the notion that Universal Grammar plays as primary a role in adult second language acquisition as it does in children’s first language acquisition, guiding learners to acquire core aspects of the target grammar.
In summary, the current volume both highlights recent advances in traditional lines of generative literature on language acquisition research and underscores new approaches and domains of research which deepen our understanding of the mechanism of language acquisition and the nature of language. This volume should provide an accessible and helpful resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students familiar with generative approaches, and for researchers working within the generative framework, to learn about the latest findings on core topics in the field. Researchers working in other frameworks may also find it a useful resource to gain an overview of trends in today’s acquisition research.