Cues and economy in the acquisition of verb movement

In special issue: Tromsø Working Papers in Language AcquisitionIn this paper we will discuss how economy principles interact with cues in the input in bilingual first language acquisition. We will look at the acquisition of verb placement in a child acquiring English and Norwegian simultaneously. Based on data from this child, it will be argued that when faced with ambiguous cues with respect to the verb movement parameter, children do not necessarily adopt the default, less marked setting. Rather, they may opt for a setting which yields an overall consistent grammar, even when this grammar contains operations that are more costly than those used in the target language. We will suggest that economy in acquisition may involve consistency in a grammar in correlation with economy in the more traditional sense within minimalism, where moving an element in general is considered more costly than not moving it (Chomsky 1995)

A note on the punctuated nature of movement paths

This paper addresses the question of how a moving item affects the nodes that lie along the path of movement. In particular, we are concerned with the question whether all nodes along the path of movement are affected in the same way or not. We first observe that most arguments that have been given to support the existence of intermediate reconstruction sites do not bear on this issue. We then discuss the logic of what a true argument would look like. Finally, we present three case studies. Two of them (A-reconstruction in Norwegian and VP-ellipsis in Dutch) provide prima facie arguments in favor of a position along the lines of Chomsky (1973, 1986, 2000), where some but not all nodes along the path of movement are affected by movement.Aquest article tracta de com afecta un element en moviment els nodes que es troben en el seu camí. Més concretament, ens interessem per la qüestió de si tots els nodes que es troben en el camí de l'element en moviment queden afectats de la mateixa manera. Primer observem que la majoria d'arguments que s'han donat a favor de l'existència de posicions intermèdies de reconstrucció no són rellevants per la qüestió que ens ocupa. Tot seguit considerem com hauria de ser un argument rellevant al nostre propòsit. Finalment, estudiem tres fenòmens concrets, dos dels quals (reconstrucció A en noruec i el·lipsi d'SV en neerlandès), aparentment, donen suport a la idea que només alguns nodes, no tots, queden afectats pel moviment, una postura anàloga a la defensada per Chomsky (1973, 1986, 2000)

Norwegian Object Shift as IP-internal topicalization

In this paper we discuss the phenomenon of Object Shift in Norwegian, and we show that this operation is more complex and discourse related than what has traditionally been assumed. We argue that Object Shift cannot be accounted for in a purely prosodic approach. Rather, we demonstrate that a common denominator for all objects undergoing Object Shift is that they are topics. We thus propose that Object Shift should be analysed as (IP-internal) topicalization. Furthermore, we discuss in detail the peculiar behaviour of the topical pronominal object det ‘it’ in cases where its referent is not an individuated, gender-agreeing noun, but rather a non-individuated referent, like a full clause, a VP or a type DP. In such cases, this pronoun typically refrains from Object Shift. We discuss the contrast between these types of objects and shifting objects in light of the topic hierarchy presented in Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007) and show that pronominal objects that undergo Object Shift have the characteristics of familiar topics, while det ‘it’ in the nonshifting contexts have the characteristics of aboutness topics. Consequently, we propose that Object Shift only applies to pronominal objects that constitute familiar topics

Different outcomes in the acquisition of residual V2 and do-support in three Norwegian-English bilinguals: Cross-linguistic influence, dominance and structural ambiguity

Published Version, available at:https://dx.doi.org/10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2018.02130This paper investigates the acquisition of residual verb second (V2) in three corpora consisting of data from Norwegian-English bilinguals (Emma, Emily and Sunniva) in order to determine to what extent these structures are affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from Norwegian V2. The three girls exhibit three different patterns with regard to the relevant constructions. They are very target-like in their use of auxiliaries in the relevant structures. However, when it comes to do-support, Emily and Sunniva are equally target-like, while Emma mainly produces non-target-like structures. These either involve the omission of do, or non-target-like movement of a lexical verb. Furthermore, Emma also allows verb movement across the subject with both lexical verbs and auxiliaries in topicalised structures, suggesting that she has overgeneralised residual V2 across verb types and clause types. Emily, on the other hand, is very target-like in structures involving residual V2 in English, but also allows auxiliaries and dummy-do to move across the subject in topicalised structures, overgeneralising residual V2 to apply to non-subject-initial declaratives. Finally, Sunniva is very precocious and very target-like in all the relevant structures, which may be an indication of acceleration due to CLI from Norwegian V2. We discuss these results with reference to language balance, finding that the measures available to us suggest that the differences between the children cannot straightforwardly be explained by language dominance. Instead, we suggest that these results can be accounted for by ambiguity in the English system, leaving the data open to several possible interpretations when acquired in contact with the consistent V2 system in Norwegian. This has several consequences: (i) the three girls’ parsers interpret the input differently, (ii) differences between the three children are qualitative rather than quantitative and (iii) there has to be some mechanism that ensures that the children can ‘recover’ from these non-target-like grammars. In this paper, we will focus on the first two issues

Different Outcomes in the Acquisition of Residual V2 and Do-Support in Three Norwegian-English Bilinguals: Cross-Linguistic Influence, Dominance and Structural Ambiguity

This paper investigates the acquisition of residual verb second (V2) in three corpora consisting of data from Norwegian-English bilinguals (Emma, Emily and Sunniva) in order to determine to what extent these structures are affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from Norwegian V2. The three girls exhibit three different patterns with regard to the relevant constructions. They are very target-like in their use of auxiliaries in the relevant structures. However, when it comes to do-support, Emily and Sunniva are equally target-like, while Emma mainly produces non-target-like structures. These either involve the omission of do, or non-target-like movement of a lexical verb. Furthermore, Emma also allows verb movement across the subject with both lexical verbs and auxiliaries in topicalised structures, suggesting that she has overgeneralised residual V2 across verb types and clause types. Emily, on the other hand, is very target-like in structures involving residual V2 in English, but also allows auxiliaries and dummy-do to move across the subject in topicalised structures, overgeneralising residual V2 to apply to non-subject-initial declaratives. Finally, Sunniva is very precocious and very target-like in all the relevant structures, which may be an indication of acceleration due to CLI from Norwegian V2. We discuss these results with reference to language balance, finding that the measures available to us suggest that the differences between the children cannot straightforwardly be explained by language dominance. Instead, we suggest that these results can be accounted for by ambiguity in the English system, leaving the data open to several possible interpretations when acquired in contact with the consistent V2 system in Norwegian. This has several consequences: (i) the three girls’ parsers interpret the input differently, (ii) differences between the three children are qualitative rather than quantitative and (iii) there has to be some mechanism that ensures that the children can ‘recover’ from these non-target-like grammars. In this paper, we will focus on the first two issues

The acquisition of word order in L2 Norwegian: The case of subject and object shift

Accepted manuscript version. Published version available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586518000203.This article reports on a syntactic acceptability judgement study of 59 adult L2/Ln learners of Norwegian and a group of native controls, studying subject and object shift. These constructions involve movement of (mainly) pronominal subjects or objects across negation/adverbs. Both subject shift and object shift display considerable micro-variation in terms of syntax and information structure, dependent on factors such as nominal type (pronoun vs. full DP), function (subject vs. object), and information status (given vs. new/focused). Previous studies have shown that Norwegian children have an early preference for the unshifted position in both constructions, but that they acquire subject shift relatively early (before age 3). Object shift, on the other hand, is typically not in place until after age 6–7. Importantly, children are conservative learners, and never shift elements that should not move in the adult language. The results of the current study show that L2/Ln learners do not make all the fine distinctions that children make, in that they have a clear preference for all subjects in shifted position and all objects in unshifted position, although some distinctions fall into place with increased proficiency. Importantly, unlike children, the L2/Ln learners are not conservative learners; rather, they over-accept syntactic movement in several cases. The equivalent to this in language production would be to apply syntactic movement where it is not attested in the target language, which would be the opposite behaviour to that observed in L1 children

On variation in Faroese verb placement

In this paper, we present and discuss results from an investigation of verb placement in modern Faroese in which we collected data from speakers from a number of different dialect areas in the Faroe Islands. Altogether we interviewed 54 informants (age 15 – 67, 29 women and 25 men). Therefore, our study not only investigates the geographical variation claimed to be present in Faroese with respect to verb placement, but also gender and age variation. Our results indicate that verb movement in non-V2 contexts is no longer commonly available to the speakers of Faroese. Our results also suggest that verb movement across adverbs like often and already tends to be more acceptable than movement across negation and other adverbs like never and undoubtedly. Furthermore, movement of finite auxiliaries generally receives a slightly higher score than movement of finite main verbs. Our results do not show any differences in the judgements of speakers below and above the age of 25. Contrary to Jonas (1996), we find that speakers in the North are, if anything, more likely to accept verb movement than speakers in the South