A case for 'acquisitional strategies': some methodological observations on investigation into second language learners' initial state'

Abstract

This article reports on a pilot investigation into initial assumptions of second language learners in the methodological framework of 'acquisitional strategies'.² Its focus is predominantly methodological, but experimental data is used to illustrate the approach. Acquisitional strategies constitute an elaboration of recent applications of the parameter setting model of grammar to the investigation of second language learners' initial state in that in this framework markedness and parameter setting interact with cognitive and psycholinguistc factors. Acquisitional strategies are understood as an identifiable, but subconscious plane according to which acquisition is handled and which is based on a subconscious assumption or a range of assumptions about the linguistic characteristics of the language under acquisition. Learners' initial state or their assumptions are seen as reflected empirically by a range of interacting formal and substantive choices, attached to a particular grammatical phenomenon. In contrast to the parameter setting model, the analysis of second language learners' initial state in the context of acquisitional strategies is essentially individual-based. An exploratory application of this framework to the investigation of second language learners' initial state has been undertaken in the context of acquisition of preposition stranding by English learners of Dutch. Preposition stranding refers to a marked phenomenon where movement extracts an NP complement of the preposition out of PP, leaving the preposition 'stranded' behind. The respective realization of this phenomenon in English and Dutch manifests interesting syntactic and morphological contrasts, which render it a valuable empirical tool for evaluation of acquisitional strategies. A tendency to statistically significant individual choices has been noted in this study. The predominant choice, manifested by the subjects, appears to be a strategy associated here with the assumption of nonequivalence of the phenomenon of preposition stranding in English and in Dutch.

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