Structural surface overlap and derivational complexity in crosslinguistic transfer: Acquisition of English genitive alternation by Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners

Abstract

This article adopts the surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses to study crosslinguistic transfer in the adult second language (L2) acquisition of English genitive alternation (between the s-genitives and the of genitives) by intermediate and advanced Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners. While the s-genitive (e.g. the boy’s shirt) and the of-genitive (e.g. the shirt of the boy) are allowed in principle to denote possession, the s-genitive is the native option when the possessor is human and the possessum is nonhuman. In standard syntactic analyses, the s-genitive is held to be more complex than the of-genitive, since it involves raising the possessor in the determiner phrase (DP). Egyptian Arabic is also known for its genitive alternation; it uses the synthetic genitive (the construct state), and the analytic genitive (the free state) that both overlap partially or significantly with the of-genitive. The results of an elicited production task showed that the intermediate group tended to produce the of-genitives in contexts in which the s-genitives were the target construction. The advanced group, on the other hand, produced the more complex s-genitives. These findings suggest that the surface overlap involved between the of-genitives and the corresponding genitive constructions in Egyptian Arabic conspired to trigger this crosslinguistic transfer. Also, resorting to the overlapping of-genitive option can be viewed as a strategy to avoid the more complex s-genitive option. The results of the advanced group imply that the acquisition of English genitive alternation undergoes two developmental stages. In the first, learners favor the less complex and overlapping of-genitives. In the second, they acquire the syntactic derivation in the s-genitives that raises the possessor in the DP.

Keywords

Arabic crosslinguistic transfer derivational complexity English genitive alternation second language acquisition structural overlap

I Introduction

Surface overlap and derivational complexity have been identified as two language-internal situations that modulate crosslinguistic influence in first language (L1) acquisition as well as in child second language (L2) acquisition, but less frequently in adult L2 acquisition. Proponents of the surface overlap hypothesis argue that when language A allows for one option of a structure and language B allows for two options, one of which overlaps with the language A type on the surface level, learners tend to transfer the language A-type to language B (Döpke, 1998; Hulk and Müller, 2000; Müller, 1998; Müller and Hulk, 2001; Yip and Matthews, 2000, 2007, 2009). For example, whereas English allows only right-headed compounds (e.g. cat fish), Persian allows for right-headed (mahi ghermez ‘gold fish’) and left-headed (gorbi mahi ‘cat fish’) compounds (see Foroodi-Nejad and Paradis, 2009). In this learning scenario, the overlap hypothesis would predict the transfer of right-headed compounds (the overlapping option) in Persian. Müller and Hulk (2001) proposed that the preference of the overlapping option causes delay in convergence on target structure. This argument indirectly implies that the overlapping option may persist for some time in the acquisition process, and only at a later stage learners may start to use the target structure. Evidence contrary to the predictions of the surface overlap hypothesis has been found in a number of studies showing that the option that is favored may not necessarily be the overlapping one (Nicoladis, 2002; Strik, 2012; Strik and Pérez-Leroux, 2011; White, 1987, 1991).

The derivational complexity hypothesis, which is compatible with the economy principles of derivation (Chomsky, 1995), postulates that bilingual children, when faced with two structural options, tend to transfer the less complex option that involves less syntactic derivations (Jakubowicz, 2011; Prévost et al., 2010; Strik, 2012; Strik and Pérez-Leroux, 2011). In adult L2 acquisition studies, an argument has been made that structures or derivations ‘that are less complex appear earlier in language development’ (Slavkov, 2011: 227). A similar argument has been made in child and adult L2 acquisition that derivational complexity constrains developmental sequence (Frank, 2013; Prévost et al., 2010). However, contrary evidence has shown that a more complex option may be favored over a simple one earlier in language acquisition when the language-external conditions such as dominance were absent (see Park-Johnson, 2017).

Although the discussions of the surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses did not directly address the developmental stages of L2 acquisition, the present study tests a relevant argument that arises from these discussions. It tests the prediction that L2 learners would favor the less complex and overlapping option before they would produce the more complex and non-overlapping option at the advanced stage. This argument is tested in the acquisition of English genitive alternation (of-genitives and s-genitives) by two groups (intermediate and advanced) of Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners who represent two distinct stages of interlanguage development. While the factors driving genitive English alternation has been studied extensively in native language, the L2 acquisition of this alternation is an under-researched area of study (see Gries and Wulff, 2013). In English, the s-genitive (e.g. the boy’s shirt) and the of-genitive (e.g. the shirt of the boy) are allowed in principle to denote possession, with the s-genitive being the frequent, target and nativelike option when the possessor (the entity that owns something) is human and the possessum (the entity that is owned) is nonhuman (Altenberg, 1982; Quirk et al., 1985; Rosenbach, 2002, 2014; Stefanowitsch, 2003). According to standard syntactic analyses, these two genitive constructions vary in terms of derivational complexity. In the s-genitive, the possessor is moved or raised in the syntactic derivation of the determiner phrase (DP). In the of-genitive, on the other hand, no raising movement of the possessor is involved. Therefore, the s-genitive is held to be more complex than the of-genitive (Abney, 1987; Adger, 2003; Hawkins, 2001; Radford, 1990; Szabolcsi, 1983; Taylor, 1996). Egyptian Arabic, the second language of reference in this study, is also known for its genitive alternation (Benmamoun, 2000; Benmamoun and Choueiri, 2013; Borer, 1996; Brustad, 2000; Ouhalla, 2009, 2011; Ritter, 1988, 1991; Soltan, 2007). It uses synthetic genitive, known as the ‘construct state’ (CS) (e.g. ʔamiiṣ el-walad, literally ‘shirt the boy’) and the analytic genitive, known as the ‘free state’ (FS) (e.g. el-ʔamiiṣ bitaaʕ el-walad, literally ‘the shirt of the boy’). The synthetic genitive shows partial overlap with the less complex of-genitive (they both start with the possessum (ʔamiiṣ ‘the shirt’)), and the analytic genitive shows significant overlap with the less complex of-genitive (they both start with the possessum (el-ʔamiiṣ ‘the shirt’) followed by a genitive exponent (bitaaʕ ‘of’) and closes with the possessor (el-walad ‘the boy)).

The present study asks, first, to what extent intermediate Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners of English tend to produce high proportions of the of-genitives (the less complex and overlapping option) in contexts in which the s-genitives (the more complex and non-overlapping option) is the target construction. Second, the study asks whether a more advanced group of Egyptian-Arabic speaking learners of English would exhibit a similar pattern of performance or take a different route and produce higher proportions of the s-genitives. Answers to these questions, first, deepen our understanding of the combined effects of surface overlap and derivational complexity in modulating crosslinguistic transfer. Second, they shed light on the developmental sequence of genitive alternation in L2 English acquisition studies.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. In the next two sections, I review the theoretical positions of the surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses in language acquisition studies. I also overview results of previous studies that supported or refuted these two hypotheses. Next, I provide a syntactic analysis of genitive constructions in English and Egyptian Arabic in which I show the structural overlap and complexity entailed in these constructions. Following this, I present the study itself where I provide the research questions, the methodology, and the results. The final section concludes with a summary and discussion of the findings.

II The surface overlap hypothesis

Surface overlap was proposed as an important language-internal factor to explain selectivity of crosslinguistic transfer. Hulk and Müller (2000: 228–29) argue that for transfer to occur between the two languages, ‘there has to be a certain overlap of the two systems at the surface level.’ Yip and Matthews (2009) reformulate Hulk and Müller’s overlap condition as follows: ‘There is surface overlap between the two languages, such that language A allows one option and language B allows two, one of which is isomorphic to the option allowed in language A’ (p. 8). In this situation, learners would tend to favor the language A-type in language B. In other words, it is the option that is common in the two languages that is reinforced in the language that allows the two options.

Predictions of the structural overlap hypothesis have been tested mostly in bilingual studies. Earlier, Müller (1998) examined the acquisition of subordinate clauses by German-French/ Italian/English bilinguals. German allows multiple word order possibilities in subordinate clauses, including the verb–object order and the object–verb order. English, Italian, and French allow only the verb–object pattern, which overlaps with its German equivalent. Results showed that bilingual children found it difficult to learn the German multiple word order possibilities in subordinate clauses. Importantly, crosslinguistic transfer was found from English, Italian, and French to German, but not from German to English, Italian, or French. A very similar finding was reported in Döpke (1998), who examined the acquisition of word order in German verb phrases by three German–English bilingual children. She found evidence of transfer from English to German, but not from German to English. Döpke concluded that the surface overlap resulted in the overextension of the verb–object order. This pattern was not found in monolingual German children.

Support for the role of surface overlap in crosslinguistic transfer has been found in other studies that examined the acquisition of overt subjects by bilingual Spanish–English children. English requires the use of overt grammatical subjects, but in Spanish, both null and overt subjects are used. Paradis and Navarro (2003) found that a Spanish–English bilingual child used overt subjects in Spanish more than three Spanish monolingual children. This overuse was due to the influence of English overt subjects. The same result was found in Italian–English bilinguals (Serratrice et al., 2004) and in Hebrew–English bilinguals (Hacohen and Schaeffer, 2007). Additional support of the surface overlap hypothesis was found in the acquisition of compounds by Persian–English bilinguals. Whereas English allows only right-headed compounds (cat fish), Persian allows both right-headed (mahi ghermez) and left-headed compounds (gorbi mahi). For example, Foroodi-Nejad and Paradis (2009) found that Persian–English bilingual children produced more right-headed compounds in the direction of Persian more than monolinguals. This finding was attributed to the influence of the overlapping right-headed compounds between the two languages. Yip and Matthews (2009) use the surface overlap hypothesis to explain the crosslinguistic transfer of wh-in-situ in Cantonese to wh-movement in English. Whereas Cantonese allows only the wh-in-situ, English allows both the wh-in-situ and the wh-movement. The authors argue that the surface overlap explains the high proportion of the wh-in-situ in the direction of English. The conclusion that emerges from these studies is that surface overlap directs children towards that overlapping particular option in the target language when it allows more than one structure.

Although the surface structural hypothesis was primarily outlined for bilingual acquisition, similar proposals have been made in adult L2 acquisition (for an L2 perspective, see White, 2001). Zobl (1980), adopting a structural approach, argued that structural congruity of the L1 and L2 conspires to constrain ‘linguistic borrowing’ a term that can be equated with crosslinguistic influence. This structural congruity results in selectivity of the L1 influence on L2 acquisition. For example, whereas French allows for pre- and post-verbal object pronouns, English allows only the post-verbal option. Put in surface overlap terms, French and English overlap in the post-verbal option. Zobl found that English-speaking learners of French tended to place the object pronouns after the verb, although there is a tendency to use both options in French. Crosslinguistic influence in the direction of English was not found. That is, French-speaking learners of English did not place object pronouns before the verb. Zobl (1980) attributed this unidirectionality to the congruity between French and English in the post-verbal option.

A second parallel proposal with the surface overlap hypothesis in L2 acquisition is the ‘transfer to somewhere principle’ as outlined by Andersen (1983). This principle postulates that ‘a grammatical form or structure will occur consistently and to a significant extent in interlanguage as a result of transfer if and only if there already exists the potential for (mis)generalizing from the input to produce the same form or structure’ (Andersen, 1983: 178). According to this principle, ‘the potential for (mis)generalizing from the input’ is an indirect candidate to the overlapping option in the L2. Evidence for this principle was found in the L2 acquisition of nominal compounds in Dutch by Turkish and Moroccan learners in a study by Broeder et al. (1993). This combination of languages offered a good test because in Dutch there is ambivalence in terms of the position of the compound heads: both head-initial and head-final compounds are permissible. Turkish-speaking learners were found to produce head-final compounds and Moroccan Arabic-speaking learners were found to produce more head-initial compounds (presumably transferred from their L1s).

Although the results of these studies provide support for theoretical parallels to the overlap theory, there is evidence in the literature that an L1 form that does not exist in the L2 may transfer to the L2 when one (or more) of the related L1 forms overlaps with the form(s) in the L2. This evidence comes from dative constructions in English and French: whereas English allows double-object dative (John gives Mary the book) and prepositional dative (John gives the book to Mary), French allows only the latter. The surface overlap hypothesis predicts that English-speaking learners of French would tend to favor the prepositional dative. However, White (1987) found that they accepted double-object dative even after years of exposure to French in an immersion context. They should have opted for the overlapping prepositional option. This evidence runs against the predictions of the surface overlap hypothesis. Another example of evidence contrary to the surface overlap hypothesis comes from Mazurkewich (1984), who found that French-speaking learners of English accepted the double-object dative, the option that was not triggered by the L1–L2 overlap. A third example is White (1991), who found that French speakers overextended the French-type placement of adverbs between the verb and direct object to L2 English (I drink *often coffee), which may not be triggered by the L1–L2 overlap of adverb placement options (Often, I drink coffee/ I drink coffee often).

III The derivational complexity hypothesis

Evidence contrary to the predictions of the surface overlap hypothesis has motivated other language-internal explanations to arise. One explanation examined to what extent the derivational complexity of the two structural options determine the option to be transferred. The main idea of the derivational complexity hypothesis is that when learners are faced with two structural options in the target language, they tend to produce the less complex one, irrespective of the surface overlap (Strik, 2012; Strik and Pérez-Leroux, 2011). This proposal is in line with the economy principles in generative grammar (Chomsky, 1995; Radford, 2009) that are thought to be operative in the process of L1 acquisition as much as they are in adult L2 acquisition. According to these principles, whenever movement is optional, L1 and bilingual children choose the derivation without movement. This claim has been tested in earlier studies. For example, Zuckerman (1988) found that Dutch–English bilinguals preferred the participial + finite Verb (V) word order more than the finite V + participial word order, an option that does not involve further verb raising. Following Zuckerman (1998), Gavarró (1998) studied the word order alternation of an English–Catalan bilingual with special focus on noun raising over adjectives. In English, there is no noun raising over adjectives, whereas in Catalan the noun surfaces before the adjective. She found that the bilingual’s spontaneous production was not on target; there was lack of noun raising in the direction of Catalan. In another study, Gavarró (2003) reported evidence that showed that bilingual participant tended to produce the Verb + Object word order that does not involve verb raising in situations where the Object + Verb was the target construction.

The specific tenets of the derivational complexity hypothesis were elaborated by Jakubowicz and Strik (2008) and later by Jakubowicz (2011) to explain the acquisition of wh-movement in learners of target languages that do not license it. They suggest that derivational complexity can be measured by a metric. This metric considers the number of times an element is moved in the derivation with utterances with fewer applications to be favored earlier in language development. The hypothesis was tested in child bilingual studies and less frequently in adult L2 studies and it was compared to surface overlap in different language pairings. Strik and Pérez-Leroux (2011) examined the production of wh-movement in Dutch by French-Dutch bilinguals. French reflects considerable variation in wh-questions: wh-questions with and without inversion as well as wh-in-situ are allowed. These three word orders reflect derivational complexity: wh-questions with inversion are most complex (they involve wh-movement as well as subject–verb inversion), wh-questions without inversion are less complex (only wh-movement is involved), and wh-in-situ is the least complex (no movement is involved). In Dutch, only the wh-questions with inversion, the option that is most complex, are allowed. The authors hypothesized that if surface overlap conditions crosslinguistic transfer, we would expect Dutch-French bilinguals to transfer the wh-questions with inversion in the direction of Dutch regardless of its complexity. On the other hand, high proportions of the wh-in-situ would give support to the role of derivational complexity, since this is the least complex option. The authors found that target-like wh-fronted questions with subject–verb inversion formed the majority of responses. However, wh-in-situ questions and wh-fronted questions without inversion were produced as a result of transfer from French. However, they do not overlap with the Dutch option. They concluded that a complexity-based theory of transfer provides a better account than a structural surface overlap approach. In another study, Strik (2012) examined the same phenomenon but in the direction of French by French-Dutch bilinguals. The results showed that wh-fronting with inversion, the only possible structure in Dutch, was not frequent in the production of monolinguals as well as bilinguals. Also, the wh-in-situ was not frequent in the bilinguals’ production. The frequent option was the wh-questions without inversion. Strik concludes that these findings can be accounted for via derivational complexity more than surface overlap.

Although the derivational complexity hypothesis was initially developed for child L1 acquisition, few studies so far have applied it to other conditions such as adult L2 acquisition and heritage learners. Slavkov (2015) applied the hypothesis to the adult L2 acquisition of long-distance wh-movement in English by Canadian French- and Bulgarian-speaking learners. French and Bulgarian overlap with English in some respects and differ in others. Whereas French allows different structures including wh-in-situ, Bulgarian does not license wh-in-situ. The results of an elicitation task showed that the L2 learner groups resorted to a wide variety of alternative structures, which had a lower degree of derivational complexity. The author called these ‘avoidance strategies’. Hopp et al. (2018) tested the derivational complexity hypothesis in the acquisition of long-distance wh-movement in heritage Plautdietsch German and adult L2 English. The early learners of English, (heritage speakers of Plautdietsch), were found to produce medial-wh only in Plautdietsch, while the late L2 learners of English exclusively produced medial-wh in English. This pattern, according to the authors, cannot be due to transfer; medial-wh surfaced as a mechanism to reduce syntactic complexity in the less dominant language, irrespective of whether it is the L1 or the L2 or whether it was acquired early or late.

Although this body of literature supports the role of derivational complexity, other studies have provided counter-evidence. Park-Johnson (2017) examined the crosslinguistic transfer of wh-in-situ from Korean to wh-questions in English. This language pairing was relevant, since Korean has the single option of wh-in-situ, which is also less complex. English, on the other hand, has two options: wh-in-situ and wh-movement. According to the surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses, Korean–English bilinguals are expected to transfer the wh-in-situ in the direction of English. Analyzing 120 English recordings for seven Korean–English bilinguals (all Korean dominant) showed surprisingly no single instance of wh-in-situ in English, which means that they favored the more complex wh-questions. This finding is contrary to what has been found in other language pairs. Park-Johnson (2017: 429) concludes that ‘looking solely at language dominance and derivational complexity may not provide a complete picture of when and in what direction crosslinguistic transfer can occur.’

IV Genitive constructions in English and Egyptian Arabic

The term ‘genitive alternation’ in English refers to the variation between the s-genitive in (1a) and the of-genitive in (1b).¹

(1) a. the boy ’s shirt

possessor genitive marker possessum

b. the shirt of the boy

possessum genitive-marker possessor

In principle, these two constructions can be used to denote possession. The factors that determine the choice between them in native English have been a long-debated topic in earlier studies (Altenberg, 1982; Quirk et al., 1985; Rosenbach, 2002, 2014) as well as in recent corpus-based studies (Gries and Wulff, 2013; Stefanowitsch, 2003). Linguistic determinants, whether semantic (such as animacy/humanness), phonological (such as rhythmic alternation) and extralinguistic factors (such as registers and genres) have been proposed as factors (for an overview of these factors, see Gries and Wulff, 2013). A main conclusion in this literature that is relevant to the purpose of this study is that the s-genitive is the target and nativelike option that is favored over the of-genitive when the possessor is human and the possessum is nonhuman.

In descriptive terms, English shows head-direction variation in the way these two genitive alternatives are built. In the surface structure of the of-genitive, the possessum (N₁) surfaces first followed by the genitive marker of and closes with the possessor (N₂). The resulting surface string is N₁ of N₂. In the s-genitive, on the other hand, the possessor surfaces first followed by the genitive marker ’s and closes with the possessum. The resulting surface string is the N₂’s N₁. In syntactic analysis studies, both the s-genitive and the of-genitive constructions have been the subject of considerable debate (for an overview, see Börjars et al. 2013). In traditional analysis when the head of the phrase has always been reserved to the lexical categories, the two genitive constructions have been labeled Noun Phrases (NP). The development of the X-Bar theory challenged the traditional view that the head of a phrase has to be a lexical word and allowed functional categories such as determiners to be used as labels for the phrase. The analysis of genitive constructions under this new approach benefited from new ideas on genitive case assignment by Chomsky (1986). As Ritter (1988: 910) elaborates, this has changed the analysis of genitive constructions in English and many other languages including Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. The s-genitive and the of-genitives are assigned genitive case by the noun at the deep structure. In the surface structures, this genitive case is realized by the insertion of the preposition of or by the possessive morpheme ’s.

Following proposals by Szabolcsi (1983), Abney (1987), Radford (1990), Taylor (1996), Adger (2003), and Carnie (2013) genitive constructions were labeled DP with the determiner not inside the NP. Instead, it heads its own phrasal projection. According to Hawkins (2001) and Carnie (2013), the deep structure for the two genitive constructions is illustrated in (2):

(2) Deep structure of s-genitive (Hawkins, 2001: 242)

According to this deep structure, to receive Case the DP complement of the possessum (i.e. the possessor or the boy) raises to the specifier of the topmost DP (see Fukui and Speas, 1986). This raising movement is illustrated in (3):

(3) Surface structure of s-genitive (Hawkins, 2001: 243)

In the of-genitive, the preposition of is thought to be a genitive case assigner (Hawkins, 2001: 244) that indicates the possessive relation between the possessum and the possessor. The topmost D in the derivation is realized by the definite article the. This derivation does not involve raising the possessor as illustrated in (4).

(4) Surface structure of of-genitive (Hawkins, 2001: 244)

In descriptive and comparative studies, it has been shown that the two English genitive constructions (and many other structures) are rendered in a canonical synthetic genitive in Standard Arabic, dubbed as CS or Iḍaafa, literally ‘annexation’ or ‘addition’ (Al-Shaer, 2014; Ryding, 2005). As can be simply observed in (5), this Arabic synthetic genitive is left-headed. It starts with the head (the possessum) and the complement (the possessor) follows.

(5) qamiiṣ el-walad

shirt the-boy

possessum possessor

‘the boy’s shirt’

Benmamoun (2000) outlines three characteristics of this construction in Arabic. First, the members of the CS, the head (the possessum) and the complement (the possessor) tend to be adjacent. Second, they both constitute a single prosodic unit. Third, only the last member of the construct state carries the marker of definiteness in definite constructions.

Although these three features are clear, the derivation of the CS in Arabic syntax has been controversial (for an overview, see Benmamoun and Choueiri, 2013; Borer, 1996; Fassi Fehri, 1993, 1999; Mohammad, 1989). According to standard analyses, the surface structure of the synthetic construct state in Arabic as well as in Modern Hebrew involves raising of the head. This analysis was originally proposed by Ritter (1988) that was based upon the DP projection (Abney, 1987), which suggests that the NP is headed by a determiner (D) projection, and that the nominal head N is in the complement of this D. This proposal was adopted in many subsequent analyses of the synthetic CS (see, among many others, for example, Borer, 1996, 1999; Fassi Fehri, 1993; Mohammed, 1989, 1999; Ouhalla, 1991; Ritter, 1991; Siloni, 1991, 1994). This analysis is illustrated in (6).

(6) Deep structure of synthetic CS in Arabic (Based on Ritter, 1991)

According to this standard analysis, the surface structure of the synthetic CS is derived by raising possessum (the head) across the possessor (the specifier/complement) where it lands in the D position. This is illustrated in (7):

(7) Surface structure of synthetic CS in Arabic (based on Ritter, 1991)

Egyptian Arabic is also a rigidly left-headed language type, but it optionally uses two genitive constructions (Brustad, 2000; Holes, 2004; Soltan, 2007). The first is the synthetic CS used in Standard Arabic. The second is the analytic construct state or the FS. In this option, a genitive marker (bitaaʕ ‘of’) connects the head (possessum) and the complement (possessor). The genitive marker agrees in number and gender with the head. The terms ‘synthetic’ and ‘analytic’ in Arabic genitives were first used by Harning (1980) to distinguish between the two constructions. She characterizes the genitive marker in Egyptian Arabic (as well as similar genitive markers in Arabic dialects) as a ‘dialectal innovation’ (p. 10). This innovation marks shifting from being synthetic languages to analytic ones (Cowell, 1964). In Egyptian Arabic, these two genitive constructions are illustrated in (8a) and (8b).

(8) a. ʔamiiṣ el-walad

shirt the-boy

possessum possessor

b. el-ʔamiiṣ bitaaʕ el-walad

the-shirt of the-boy

possessum genitive-marker possessor

‘the boy’s shirt’

(9) Surface structure of analytic CS in Arabic:

The choice between these two variants in Egyptian Arabic has been a central topic in linguistic analysis studies (Brustad, 2000; El-Tonsi, 1982; Mohammad, 1999). These studies have shown that both constructions are interchangeable for alienable possession when the possessor is human and the possessum is nonhuman (e.g. ʔamiiṣ el-walad and el-ʔamiiṣ bitaaʕ el-walad). For inalienable possession (specifically body parts and kinship), only the synthetic CS is used.

V Present study

1 Research questions

The literature on surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses has showed mixed evidence whether they solely can predict crosslinguistic transfer. Also, they did not directly address L2 developmental stages in constructions that exhibit variable degrees of overlap and derivational complexity. Descriptive and syntactic analyses of genitive constructions in English have shown that the s-genitive is more complex than the of-genitive, since it involves movement of the possessor. The surface structure of the of-genitive in English and the synthetic genitive (CS) in Egyptian Arabic show partial overlap; they both start with the possessum. More importantly, the surface structure of the of-genitive shows significant overlap with the analytic genitive (FS) in Egyptian Arabic; they both start with the possessum, followed by the genitive marker (of and bitaaʕ) and closes with the possessor. These derivational complexity and overlap realities offer a good ground to test the argument, first, whether they when combined together would conspire to trigger considerable crosslinguistic transfer effects from Egyptian Arabic to English and, second, to what extent these effects persist at the advanced stage of acquisition. Towards these goals, the present study was guided by the following two research questions:

Research question 1: To what extent do intermediate Egyptian-Arabic speaking learners of English tend to produce higher proportions of the analytic of-genitive (the less complex and overlapping option) in contexts in which s-genitive is the preferred construction?

Research question 2: To what extent do a more advanced group of Egyptian-Arabic speaking learners tend to produce higher proportions of the target s-genitive (the more complex and non-overlapping option)?

2 Participants

A total of 46 individuals participated in this study. They were divided into three groups: a group of English native speakers (n = 10), and two learner groups of Egyptian-Arabic speaking learners: an intermediate-proficiency group (n = 21), and an advanced-proficiency group (n = 15). The native speaker group consisted of American English native speakers who were doing their graduate studies in the United States. The two L2 learner groups were learning English in a summer program in an academy for teaching English as a foreign language in Egypt. Before the beginning of the study, the L2 learner groups completed a language history questionnaire presented in Arabic that collected information about their ages, education level, and L1 spoken as a child. In addition, it elicited information about their self-reported proficiency ratings in English. All participants had spoken Egyptian Arabic since birth and declared no knowledge of other foreign languages than English. The majority of the intermediate group (n = 18) were college students whose majors spanned education, business, law, social service, and agriculture. Only 3 participants were high school seniors. The mean of their ages was 24.19 (SD = 2.67). All the participants in the advanced group were college students with majors such as business, media, sociology, and law. The mean of their ages was 23 (SD = 3.50). Demographic information is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Participant demographic information.

Group	n	Average age		Self-reported proficiency (out of 5.00)		Independent proficiency (out of 100)
Group	n	Range	Mean	Range	Mean	Range	Mean
Intermediate	21	17 –28	24.19	1.50 −20.00	2.00	26 –40	3.25
Advanced	15	18 –27	23.00	3.00 –3.50	3.00	80 –90	8.50
Natives	10	25 –37	30.00	5.00	5.00	n/a	n/a

The L2 learner groups were recruited from the intermediate- and advanced- proficiency classes. Their respective proficiency levels were determined via a proficiency test that involved a reading, writing, speaking, and grammar section used by the academy.² Also, their proficiency levels were further supplemented with self-ratings. Self-ratings are extensively used as a complementary measure of proficiency (Shameem, 1998) and have been shown to correlate with linguistic performance (Flege et al., 2002). Part of the language survey the participants took before the beginning of the study asked them to rate their overall proficiency in English on a scale from 0.0 ‘beginner’ to 5.0 ‘superior’. The majority of the intermediate participants (19) rated their proficiency at 2.00, while two participants rated themselves at 1.50. The majority of the advanced group (12) rated their proficiency at 3.00 and 3 participants rated their proficiency at 3.50.

3 Materials

The task used in the present study was a meaning-based paper-and-pencil sentence completion task that was prompted with pictures. Prompted elicitation tasks are designed to elicit particular language forms or structures while the participants’ focus is on meaning (Rebuschat and Mackey, 2013). These tasks include elicited imitation, interactive tasks, role plays, picture descriptions, and oral narratives. The task included 15 frequent target items that elicited the s-genitives (all denoting alienable possession) with human possessors (e.g. boy) and nonhuman possessums (e.g. shirt). The items were scrambled with distractors. The participants were instructed to complete the missing words in each test sentence with the help of a pair of pictures. The task was carefully designed to elicit the s-genitives that best characterize the possessive relation established in each pair of pictures. Furthermore, the picture pairs were selected in such a way that only one plausible combination was possible. An example of the test items is provided in (10).

(10) Picture supplement:

Sample sentence: _________ ____________in this picture is very new. He bought it yesterday.

Target s-genitive response: The boy’s shirt

Since English is left-to-right scripted, one concern with the picture sets in this task is that the participants may strategically assume that the first picture in the set in the left side will surface first in the response, affecting the word order in the target genitives. The context established in each test sentence made it very clear that a genitive response (of-genitive or s-genitive) is expected. In order to counter-effect the order of presentation of the two pictures in each test item, 47% of the target items (7/15) started with the picture of the possessums, and 53% started with the picture of the possessors (8/15). The target items and the distracters were randomized before the participants took the task. Also, before data analysis was conducted, the potential effect that the participants may start with the first picture in the set was carefully examined, and it was determined that no participant consistently started with the words that captured the first pictures in the sets. The native speaker group were tested individually. The task took them less than 15 minutes. The two L2 learner groups were tested in their classrooms. The intermediate group took around 40 minutes to complete the task and the advanced group took less than 30 minutes to complete it. The participants were instructed to provide their responses in writing in a paper-and-pencil format. They were not allowed to correct their responses once provided.

4 Scoring and analysis

The dependent variable in this study was Genitive Type (whether s-genitive or of-genitive) and the independent variable was Group (whether intermediate or advanced). Before assigning the participant responses to their types, spelling mistakes in possessums and the possessors were tolerated. Also, words used for the possessums and the possessors that were near synonyms (e.g. table for desk), refer to similar entities (e.g. boy for student, or lady for girl) or those showing variation between British versus American English (e.g. trousers for pants) were scored. After that, the responses were distributed into five types:

of-genitives (N₁ of N_2; the shirt of the boy);

s-genitives (N₂’s N₁; the boy’s shirt);

N₁ N₂ (shirt the boy);

N₂ of N₁ (the boy of the shirt); and

irrelevant responses.

This last type included responses that started with something else (if a preposition or an unrelated word was produced) and missing items. They were excluded from the analysis.

After determining the distribution of these five response types, only the first two types (of-genitives and s-genitives) by the two learner groups were further considered for analyses in the binomial logistic regression for which the R package Generalized Linear Mixed Effect Regression (glmer) was used. The glmer model allows the simultaneous inclusion of by-participant and by-item analyses (i.e. random intercept analyses), as well as the determination of variation in the dependent variable due to the interaction of any of the fixed effect factors and the random factors. In the context of this study, three fixed effects were calculated:

Group (whether intermediate or advanced);

Order of Presentation (whether the picture of the possessum or that of the possessor surfaced first in the combination in each test item); and

the interaction between the two.

Two random effects were calculated: Participant and Item. For each of the fixed and random effects, the Chi square (χ²) the coefficient estimate (β), the degree of freedom (df), and p values were reported where appropriate.

VI Results

The native speaker group expectedly favored the right-headed s-genitives (N₂’s N₁) all the time, which is in line with the widely supported result in corpus-based research on genitive alternation (Gries and Wulff, 2013). For the intermediate group, the expected number of tokens was 315 (21 participants multiplied by 15 items). Only 12 tokens were categorized as ‘irrelevant responses’. A total of 293 items (293/315 = 93.01%) were found valid for the analysis. For the advanced group, the expected number of tokens was 225 (15 participants multiplied by 15 items). Only seven tokens were categorized as ‘irrelevant responses’ out of the total number of tokens. A total of 218 tokens (218/293 = 96.80%) were found valid for analysis. The distribution of the four responses types of of-genitives (N₁ of N_2; the shirt of the boy); s-genitives (N₂’s N₁; the boy’s shirt); N₁ N₂ (shirt the boy); and N₂ of N₁ (the boy of the shirt) are presented in Table 2. The two relevant types of of-genitives and s-genitives are presented in Figure 1.

Table 2.

Distribution of all the response types for the two learner groups.

Response type	Intermediate					Advanced
	Count raw	Mean (%)	Range (%)	SD	Median (%)	Count raw	Mean (%)	Range (%)	SD	Median (%)
of-gen	143	48.80	0.00–100	0.30	0.45	67	30.73	10.00–40.00	0.12	0.16
s-gen	55	18.77	0.00–0.56	0.20	0.11	143	65.59	60.00–90.00	0.13	0.84
N₁N₂	71	24.23	0.00–1.00	0.20	0.22	8	3.66	1.00–5.00	0.01	0.00
N₂ of N₁	24	8.19	0.00–33.00	0.15	0.00	0	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Figure 1.

Distribution of of-genitives and s-genitives for the two learner groups.

As it is clear, for the intermediate group the average of the of-genitives (N₁ of N₂) outnumbered the average of the s-genitives. It also outnumbered the average of the other two relevant response types. This suggests that the intermediate group tended to opt for the English genitive option that overlaps with their L1 Egyptian Arabic. The N₁ N₂ response type (average of 24.23%), which is direct transfer from the synthetic option (CS) in their L1 Egyptian Arabic, surfaced however comparatively lower, in their responses. Results of the advanced group exhibited a different pattern. As Figure 2 shows, the averages of the of-genitives shrank considerably (30.70%) and the average of the s-genitives increased significantly (65.50%). As it is clear, the intermediate group showed wider variation in their response types. To capture their variability in the two relevant average of the of-genitive and the s-genitive, an individual analysis was conducted. Results are provided in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Individual production of of-genitives and s-genitives by intermediate learners.

There are two main patterns. First, for 12 participants, the average of the of-genitives outnumbered the average of the s-genitives. The second is in only 6 participants of the intermediate group, the average of the s-genitives was higher than the average of the of-genitives.

To determine the fixed effects of Group (the independent factor), Order of Presentation (the co-variate), and interaction between both, as well as the random effects of Participant and Item on Response Type (of-genitives and s-genitives), two types of models were developed in R: The full model and five reduced models. The full model contained all the fixed and random effects considered in the study. The five reduced models were the same as the full model but removed one or two of the fixed and random effects from the full model to tease apart their effects. Information about the models tests and the models comparisons is presented in Appendix 1. For each of the fixed and random effects, the Chi square (χ²) the coefficient estimate (β), the standard deviation estimates (σ), the degree of freedom (df), and p values were reported. The statistical tests of the results of comparing the outcomes of the five reduced models to an appropriate higher-order (hierarchical) model are reported in Table 3.

Table 3.

Significance tests for fixed and random effects.

Fixed effects:	χ ²	df	p	β
Group (independent)	41.666	1	<.0001	2.285
Order of presentation (covariate)	1.214	1	.271	−0.748
Group*order of presentation	1.586	1	.208	0.691
Random effects:	χ ²	df	p	σ
Participant intercept	1.229	1	.268	.415
Item intercept	4.233	1	0.040	0.473

As illustrated in the table, Group had a significant effect on the production of response types whether (of-genitives or s-genitives). Since the average of the s-genitives was higher than that of the of-genitives for the advanced group as illustrated in Table 2, the significant effect reported for Group suggests that they tended to produce the target and more complex s-genitives. Also, the co-variate of Order of Presentation was not significant. This means that the order in which the pictures of the items were presented did not have an effect on the production of the response type. Last, there was no significant interaction between Group and Order of Presentation.

Now, we see that Group is a significant factor. The next step in the analysis was to specifically determine whether the average of the of-genitives significantly differed from the average of the s-genitives for the intermediate and the advanced groups separately using a binominal logistic regression in R. Towards this goal, two models (one for the intermediate and one for the advanced group) that tested the null hypothesis that each group produced the s-genitives with the same probability as the of-genitives. Each model developed was log(p/(1–p) = intercept. The value of 0 was assigned to the of-genitives and 1 was assigned to the s-genitive. If the probability is the same for both events (i.e. the two genitive response types), then the intercept estimate should be 0 and the lower limit (LL) or upper limit (UL) bounds of the 95% confidence interval should not include 0. If the probabilities are different, the intercept should be different from 0 and the 95% confidence interval should not include 0 in its LL or UL bounds. The results are illustrated in Table 4.

Table 4.

Estimate values for the intercept for the intermediate and advanced groups.

Group	Intercept estimate	95% confidence interval
Group	Intercept estimate	LL of intercept	UL of intercept
Intermediate	−4.228238	−7.429852	−1.026624
Advanced	0.6519564	0.359718	0.9441948

As illustrated in the table, for the intermediate group, the probability of responding with the of-genitives is significantly more than the probability of responding with the s-genitives. This is supported by the negative value of the intercept estimate. Also, it is supported by the negative value of the lower limit and the upper limit of the intercept of the 95% confidence interval. For the advanced group the values of the LL and the UL of the 95% confidence interval are positive, and they are different from 0. Also, the intercept estimate is positive. This suggests that the advanced group was more likely to respond with the s-genitives more than the of-genitives.

VII Discussion

The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, it asked whether L2 learners of intermediate proficiency would tend to transfer a less complex structural option that shows overlap between the L1 and the L2. Second, it asked whether a more advanced group of participants would exhibit the same pattern of performance or tend to produce the more complex option. The results of the promoted production task showed that a group of intermediate Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners of English tended significantly to produce higher proportions of the of-genitives (less complex and overlapping option) than the s-genitives (more complex and non-overlapping option). An individual analysis of the participants’ performance levels supplemented this group finding. The more advanced group, on the other hand, tended to produce significantly higher proportions of the s-genitives than those produced by the intermediate group.

The results of the intermediate group suggest that L2 learners tend to favor the less complex option that shows surface overlap with their L1. The of-genitive shows partial overlap with the synthetic genitive option (construct state) and significant overlap with the analytic genitive option (free state) in Egyptian Arabic and it does not involve noun raising. Following Müller (1998), the tendency to favor the of-genitive in this study is considered a relief strategy when learners were faced with optional structures in the input. English offers positive evidence for two genitive constructions that are not compatible at the surface string. These two constructions are in some cases interchangeable as widely evidenced in corpus-based studies (Gries and Wulff, 2013; Kreyer, 2003). For example, of-genitives and s-genitives are interchangeable for nonhuman possession (e.g. the budget of the university and the university’s budget), inalienable part–whole relations (e.g. the eyes of the baby and the baby’s eyes), and kinship relations (the son of my neighbor and my neighbor’s son). This interchangeability may have conspired to create an ambiguous input situation in which intermediate Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners of English learners felt ambivalent which genitive construction to produce. They eventually tended to favor the less complex option in the L2 that overlaps with the L1 on the surface level.

Importantly, the tendency to favor the overlapping option of of-genitives by the intermediate group may be considered as a strategy or a mechanism to avoid the more complex s-genitives. Although s-genitives are the frequently preferred target option in the input when the possessor is human and the possessum is nonhuman, intermediate learners tended to avoid it, arguably due to its derivational complexity that manifests in possessor raising. Learners resorted to the alternative of-genitive option that does not involve this raising and sounds consistent with the phrasal rules in English. The s-genitive option poses some burden on their developing L2 grammar system, and to escape that burden they resorted to the less costly option of the of-genitives. The avoidance of a complex option from a derivational standpoint has been recently found in the complex phenomena of long-distance wh-movement (Hopp et al., 2018; Jakubowicz, 2011; Slavkov, 2015). Although the derivational steps involved in the long-distance wh-movement are more than these involved in the s-genitive, the results on both phenomena show consistency; L2 learners escape the more complex option and resort to the less complex ones.

The surface overlap hypothesis predicts unidirectional crosslinguistic transfer. Transfer is predicted from the rigid language that offers a single option to the language that offers two options, but not from the optional to the rigid (Döpke, 1998; Hulk and Müller, 2000; Müller, 1998; Müller and Hulk, 2001). That is, the overlapping option is not expected to transfer from the optional to the rigid language. The single type in the rigid language results in input transparency, which minimizes transfer. Limited research in the acquisition of Arabic genitives by English-speaking learners supports this prediction. Azaz and Frank (2017) found that English-speaking learners of Standard Arabic tended to produce target-like synthetic Arabic construct states in the very early stages of acquisition (68%) only after few months of instruction. The authors argued that the canonical (i.e. rigid) left-headedness in Arabic construct phrases contributed to its perceptual salience that minimized transfer of the right-headed s-genitives from English to Standard Arabic. Results of the present study, when seen in light of the results of Azaz and Frank (2017), show that once the conditions of the structural overlap are met, crosslinguistic transfer is most likely to occur from the rigid to the optional language, and less likely from the optional to the rigid. This suggests that input conditions, whether ambiguous or transparent, are crucial. Input ambiguity (as in the direction of English genitives) resulted in the deceleration of the rate of acquisition of the target s-genitive (only 18% at intermediate proficiency). Accordingly, it prolonged the developmental stages and delayed convergence of the structural phenomenon in question. On the other hand, input transparency (as in the direction of Arabic) resulted in the acceleration of the rate of acquisition.

In the original articulation of the surface overlap hypothesis (Hulk and Müller, 2000; Müller and Hulk, 2001), the inherent characteristics of the structural property, whether grammatically narrow or pertaining to the interface between syntax and pragmatics/discourse (as in the complementizer domain), have been proposed as an additional condition that constrains crosslinguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition (for an overview, see Blom et al., 2017). The structural phenomenon in this study does not pertain to the grammar-pragmatics interface. The choice between the of-genitives or the s-genitives in the elicitation task was at the sentence level and no shift in meaning is expected. Therefore, no semantic or discourse/pragmatics constraints were involved (Sorace, 2011; White, 2011). However, crosslinguistic influence was attested. This suggests that surface overlap triggers crosslinguistic transfer in structural phenomena that do not pertain to the interfaces.

The results of this study are compatible with other studies conducted on the acquisition of English genitive constructions by speakers of other L1s that show overlap with English. Earlier, Anderson (1978) and Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) showed that Spanish-speaking learners of English were more accurate in using the of-genitives than the s-genitives. Makino (1980) examined Japanese-speaking learners accuracy rates on the s-genitives and the of-genitives and found that they were more comparatively accurate than the Spanish-speaking learners in Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) on the s-genitives. Shirahata (1988), who used the same implicational scale by Anderson (1978), also found that Japanese speakers performed more accurately on the s-genitives than Anderson’s Spanish speakers (for an overview, see Hawkins, 2001: 40–41 and 244–46). Other recent studies found a tendency to favor the of-genitive that corresponds to the de-genitive in Spanish (Fernández Dominguez, 2000; Swan and Smith, 2001; Wolford, 2006). The results of this present study when combined with these studies suggest that L2 learners of a language such as Egyptian Arabic or Spanish have to acquire the syntactic derivation that raises the possessor to the specifier position in the DP, a movement that is delayed due to the presence of an alternative genitive option in the L2 that overlaps with L1s. For L2 learners of English who speak a language like Japanese or Turkish, where the possessor movement/raising is not needed and their L1s have a possessive morpheme that corresponds to the ’s in English, there will be no need to resort to the of-genitive. They will map this ‘ready-made’ genitive option in their L1 to the corresponding option in the L2.

Results of the advanced group in this present study showed that their proportions of the of-genitive as an avoidance strategy shrank considerably as they tended to opt for the more complex and non-overlapping target option of the s-genitives. However, these proportions did not disappear completely (average of of-genitives was 30.70%). When the results of the intermediate and the advanced groups put together, they safely suggest that speakers of L1s such as Egyptian Arabic undergo two developmental phases in the acquisition of English genitive alternation. In the first phase, they tend to opt for the less complex and overlapping of-genitive option. In the second phase, they incrementally opt for the more complex and non-overlapping s-genitives. Overall, the results of this study contribute to the limited research conducted on the L2 acquisition of genitive alternation in English (Gries and Wulff, 2013).

The results of this study provide evidence that part of genitive alternation can be explained via the derivational complexity and surface overlap hypotheses. The advent of the DP analysis helped to shed light on the derivational steps involved in genitive constructions. Before this analysis, there would be no movement involved in the synthetic s-genitive, and hence no increase in complexity vis-à-vis the of-genitive construction. With this analysis, the developmental stages in the acquisition of genitive constructions are better explained. However, as one reviewer pointed out, this article cannot firmly deny the effects of other aspects that differentiate the two competing structures of of-genitives and s-genitives. These effects may have had some influence on their acquisition. One of these effects is that one structure includes a phrasal clitic (s-genitives) and the other includes a full word (of-genitives). This may have consequences for their salience and degrees of processing difficulty. Another effect is their variable length, which determines their distribution, and their frequency. The examination of each of these effects is left for future research.

VIII Concluding remarks, limitations, and future research

In conclusion, this study found that intermediate Egyptian-Arabic speaking learners tended to favor the less complex of-genitive option in English. This tendency was arguably triggered by the surface overlap between this of-genitive option and the genitive options in their L1 Egyptian Arabic. Crosslinguistic transfer as evidenced in this article is argued to have occurred in a domain of grammar where the L2 learners were confronted with ambiguous input that allows the of-genitives and the s-genitives. Resorting to the overlapping option is considered a strategy to avoid the more complex option. The quantitative differences between the accuracy rates shown by the intermediate group in this present study and by the beginning group in the acquisition of CS in Arabic by English-speaking learners suggest that input conditions, whether ambiguous or transparent, are crucial. This conclusion is in line with the postulations of the surface structural overlap hypothesis. In addition, the results of the advanced group suggest that the acquisition of genitive alternation in English by Arabic-speaking learners undergoes two phases.

The limited number of participants in this study and the single elicitation task call for a large-scale study using other meaning-based elicitation tasks such as oral narratives. Another future study needs to examine the distribution of the of-genitives and the s-genitives in large written and spoken corpora by Egyptian-speaking learners of English as well as speakers of other languages. Examining genitive alternation in these corpora is expected to further reveal the role of surface overlap. The analysis of spoken learner corpora, in particular, is expected to show whether the tendency to favor the overlapping option persists in real-time processing. For ease of processing, Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners are expected to favor the less complex and less costly of-genitives that show congruence with their L1 genitives. Also, in only six participants of the intermediate group, the average of the s-genitives was higher than the average of the of-genitives. This pattern contradicts the group finding and adds to learner variability in L2 acquisition, but it also raises important questions whether these six learners were randomly fluctuating between the target s-genitives and the non-target of-genitives, or if this tendency is a manifestation of the emergence of possessor noun raising in the DP in the s-genitives. Using think-aloud protocol in future work can shed further light on this question. Also, as suggested by one of the reviewers, since the two forms of genitives in Egyptian Arabic are not always interchangeable (for inalienable possession (specifically body parts and kinship), only the construct state can be used), a future study may focus on alienable possession and examine how L2 learners would perform in such context. Lastly, another future study may focus on whether the same crosslinguistic effects can occur for L2 learners of English who speak other varieties of Arabic. Since there are similar genitive exponents in Arabic dialects that correspond to the one in Egyptian, a similar pattern of results is expected.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix 1.

Estimates of fixed and random effects in all tested models.

	Fixed effects			Random effects
	Group	OOP	Group* OOP	Participant	Item
Full model:	2.285	−0.748	0.691	0.415	0.473
Reduced models (RM):
RM1 compared to full model	2.584	−0.276		0.408	0.480
RM2 compared to RM1	2.571			0.400	0.477
RM3 compared to RM1		−0.280		1.508	0.462
RM4 compared to full model	2.231	−0.723	0.671		0.451
RM5 compared to full	2.140	−0.737	0.706	0.370

Notes. OOP: Order of Presentation. The shaded cells in the table refer to the effects whether fixed or random that were left out of the model.

Acknowledgements

I thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Also, I am grateful to the participants for their help with the data collection. I also thank Joshua Frank, with whom I share strong passion for the L2 acquisition of nominals, for his discouragement. I also express my gratitude to Samira Farwaneh for her help with the syntactic analysis and to Mark Borgstrom for his help with the statistical analysis.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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