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Tense-aspect-modality: bridging the gap between theory and SLA empirical research| old_uid | 7438 |
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| title | Tense-aspect-modality: bridging the gap between theory and SLA empirical research |
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| start_date | 2009/10/12 |
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| schedule | 14h30-16h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | The investigation of the acquisition of temporal systems by L2 learners has been the focus of much empirical research particularly since the formulation of the Aspect
Hypothesis by Andersen (1986, 1991) for two main reasons: 1) TAM systems involve all aspects of a language – pragmatic, lexical, syntactic, morphological – as well as the
mapping from one aspect to the other (e.g., Ayoun & Salaberry 2005; Salaberry 2008); 2) TAM systems allow us to test the latest theoretical minimalist assumptions as well as the current L2 acquisition hypotheses such as the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (Hawkins 2001) and the Failed Features Hypothesis (Hawkins & Chan 1997; Hawkins & Liszka 2003) versus the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White 2000).
Testing these hypotheses is important because it will ultimately help us in addressing the debate between emergentism (O’Grady 2008) and nativism (e.g., Goad & White 2008; Hawkins 2008). However, we must carefully navigate the growing divide between
current and rapidly evolving minimalist assumptions and its implications for L2
acquisition working hypotheses.
Following the suggestion that syntactic parameters may involve only functional
categoriestegories leading to the functional parameterization hypothesis (Borer 1984; Chomsky 1989; Fukui 1986, 1988; Ouhalla 1991a), research in L1 and L2 acquisition in the 1990s was concerned with the phrase structure that child and adult learners may start with and how it may develop. Thus for instance Radford (1990, 1995) proposed that children’s initial clauses are just lexical VPs, without functional architecture, and thus without IP and CP projections. However, the initial small number of functional categories such as CP, IP or DP greatly expanded. For instance, Cinque (1999) extended Pollock’s (1989) split-INFL to an exploded functional structure above VP whereby each of the verb’s inflectional features (subcategories of tense, mood, modality, aspect, voice, etc) is associated with a distinct functional head, itself projecting a full phrase and the resulting inflectional hierarchy has further evolved (Cinque 2006) to the point that we need to ask what it means to refer to the acquisition of functional categories. Lardiere (2009) proposes that the question needs to be addressed in terms of more specialized feature matrices and suggests that the task of the L2 learner consists in reassembling features. This talk will consider whether this is the right approach given the most recent minimalist assumptions and learnability issues related to the L2 acquisition of TAM systems. |
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| responsibles | Copley |
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