L1 transfer of (morpho)syntax

After research on the bilingual lexicon, the interest in L1 (morpho)syntactic transfer has grown. While lexical transfer is intuitively easy to imagine, regarding (morpho)syntax, MacWhinney (2005) states that “There is clear evidence for massive transfer in audition, articulation, lexicon, sentence interpretation, and pragmatics. In the area of morphosyntax and sentence production, transfer is not as massive, largely because it is more difficult to construct the relations between L1 and L2 forms in these areas.“ (p. 55). So it seems that in the area of (morpho)syntax, it is more difficult to observe L1 transfer. For this reason, the present thesis aims to provide more insights into L1 transfer effects in an area of morphosyntax, namely, grammatical gender. Nevertheless, also in the case of morphosyntax and syntax, shared representations for L1 and L2 have been proposed by researchers.

According to the “shared syntax” account, bilinguals have a single syntactic representation for structures that exist in both languages, whereas “separate syntax” accounts claim that the representations for these structures are language-specific (Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004, p. 409). In the following, I will give an overview of some of the existing evidence. As we shall see, there is also evidence for L1 syntactic and morphosyntactic influences on L2 sentence processing even though the evidence is less clear-cut than in the case of the lexicon. Morphosyntactic transfer in a sentence context is especially important for the second experiment which investigates gender transfer in sentence processing. The present section also provides a theoretical background on (morpho)syntactic transfer in general, against which grammatical gender transfer studies discussed in the next sections can be evaluated.

3.2.1 L1 transfer of syntax

Evidence against a strict separation of L1 and L2 grammatical representations and for L1 influences also in grammatical processes comes from syntactic priming. The notion of a “shared-syntax account”

or a “separate-syntax account” (Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004) has been investigated across modalities with a wide variety of priming methodologies and grammatical constructions, such as active/passive constructions (Hartsuiker et al., 2004; Kantola & van Gompel, 2011; Weber &

Indefrey, 2009), dative constructions (Loebell & Bock, 2003; Salamoura & Williams, 2007a; Shin &

Christianson, 2009) and ambiguous relative clause attachment (Desmet & Declercq, 2006; Nitschke, Kidd, & Serratrice, 2010). The L2 at test was mostly English⁵, but syntactic priming has been observed with numerous L1s (e.g. Spanish, German, Swedish, Greek, Korean, Dutch). This shows that not only L1 words, but also L1 syntactic information is active during L2 processing and influences L2 sentence

4 This seems to be especially true for cognates as cross-language influences have been found to be even stronger for cognates than for noncognates (e.g., Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2000; Dijkstra, Grainger, & van Heuven, 1999).

5 Except for Nitschke et al. (2010) who used English as L1 and German and Italian as L2s.

3.2 L1 transfer of (morpho)syntax

processing, which has important consequences for the second experiment of the present thesis (chapter 4.2). Under a cognitive psychological account, ambiguous relative clause attachment might be especially relevant for my second experiment because, just as in anaphor resolution, a referent has to be stored in short-term memory and the correct referent has to be retrieved in order to understand the ensuing phrase or sentence. It is interesting that L1 information or processing preferences can possibly interfere during the retrieval of a referent stored in working memory.

Ambiguous relative clause resolution by L2 speakers has also been investigated using other methods such as eye-tracking or self-paced reading studies, which allow a more direct observation of readers´

parsing strategies. An often stated example of an ambiguous relative clause is the sentence Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony, which was first used by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988). In this sentence, it is unclear if the servant or the actress was on the balcony and languages differ with regard to their attachment preferences. The evidence regarding L1 transfer is more mixed than in the previously discussed studies. Frenck-Mestre and Pynte (1997)⁶ and Juffs (1998) found evidence for transfer of L1 parsing strategies, while Felser, Roberts, Marinis, and Gross (2003) and Papadopoulou and Clahsen (2003) found no evidence for L1 transfer effects. Dussias and Sagarra (2007), on the other hand, even found evidence for transfer of L2 parsing strategies into L1 in high-proficient subjects. This is consistent with the suggestion by Nitschke et al. (2010) that the lack of finding transfer effects can also be due to the fact that L2 speakers sometimes “amalgamate” parsing strategies from their L1 and L2 (p. 96), as found by Hernandez, Bates, and Avila (1994) and Su (2001) and postulated by the Competition Model (Li & MacWhinney, 2012). However, in the resolution of another complex syntactic structure, namely, wh-dependencies, it seems that usually no evidence for L1 transfer is found (Jackson & Dussias, 2009; Marinis, Roberts, Felser, & Clahsen, 2005; Williams, Möbius, & Kim, 2001). Yet, the study by Juffs (2005) suggests that the existence of wh-movement in L1 poses an advantage in the correct processing of wh-movement in L2, which would mean that L1 does exert an influence. These mixed findings show that in the domain of syntax, transfer effects are apparently either weaker, less frequent, or more difficult to observe than, for example, in the lexical domain discussed earlier. This raises the question, if and under which circumstances L2 syntactic and morphosyntactic processing are affected by L1 transfer.

Several other studies investigating a range of other syntactic phenomena, namely the use of animacy and word order cues in sentence interpretation, have found evidence for transfer of L1 processing strategies. Liu, Bates, and Li (1992) investigated the transfer of sentence processing strategies in Chinese–English and English–Chinese bilinguals of different AoAs and proficiencies. In order to indicate the agent of an action, Chinese relies above all on animacy cues, while English relies mostly on word order cues (cf. cues in the Competition Model, section 1.5.2). The question was which cues L2 speakers would rely on. Sentences manipulating word order and animacy cues were presented auditorily in subjects´ respective L2s. Subjects had to name the agent of the sentence. Interpretation of critical stimulus sentences such as The horse is kicking the carrot. (word order and animacy cues

6 Curiously, this study is seen as support for native-like L2 processing without L1 influences by some authors (e.g., by Kroll and Dussias (2006, p. 188): “The results failed to show any qualitative differences between the native and second language speakers.”, also by Dussias (2003) and Jackson and Dussias (2009), but not Barto-Sisamout et al., (2009, p. 4). However, Frenck-Mestre and Pynte (1997) explicity state: “Our results showed a localized effect of the native language, whereby readers hesitated momentarily at the region of the verb when reading in the second language if the verb behaved differently in the native language.” (p. 143) and conclude:

“Lastly, we have demonstrated that the bilingual’s native language can produce a localized effect on sentence processing in the second language.” (p. 144).

coincide) vs. The carrot is kicking the horse. (word order and animacy cues do not coincide) was compared to the interpretation of, for example, The horse is kicking the cow. and *The horse the cow is kicking.. L1 transfer effects were found in both late bilingual groups. Late English–Chinese bilinguals continued to rely heavily on word order, even if that meant identifying an inanimate object such as a carrot as the agent. Late Chinese–English bilinguals, on the other hand, relied mostly on animacy cues (and thus semantic plausibility) when interpreting English sentences. These results were replicated by Su (2001) in an offline writing task using the same language pairs. Both studies also found that transfer was mediated by proficiency, that is, transfer decreased with increasing proficiency. In an earlier study, McDonald (1987) also found that Dutch–English and English–Dutch bilingual speakers first relied on the cues preferred in their L1 (i.e., word order in English and case inflection in Dutch), but started to rely more on the preferred L2 cues with increasing proficiency. In a similar vein, Kilborn (1989) found that native German speakers and native English speakers transfer their L1 sentence interpretation preferences to L2 processing, that is, morphological cues for L1 German speakers and word order cues for L1 English speakers. All these studies are in line with the Competition Model, which predicts great reliance on L1 cues in beginners´ L2 processing and a shift towards L2 cue use at higher proficiencies. For the second experiment of the present thesis (cf.

chapter 4.2), which investigates L1 gender transfer in a sentence context, this could mean that L1 gender cues are active in L2 processing, even if these cues have no importance in L2.

3.2.2 L1 transfer of morphology/morphosyntax

L1 influences in morphology/morphosyntax have been less extensively investigated than in L2 syntactic processing. In the case of morphology, transfer is a bit different. As MacWhinney (2005) states “The fact that morphosyntax is not subject to transfer is a reflection of the general Competition Model dictum that “everything that can transfer will. In the areas of phonology, lexicon, orthography, syntax, and pragmatics, there are attempts to transfer. However, in morphology there is no transfer because there is no basis for transfer. The exception here is between structurally mapable features, as in the example of gender transfer from Spanish to German.” (p. 59). So instead of observing transfer of processing strategies as in the domain of syntax or transfer of L1 word meanings, research on L1 influences in the domain of morphology strongly suggests that the presence or absence of certain morphosyntactic features in L1 plays a major role in L2 acquisition and processing. Various studies have found that if a certain morphological marking is absent in L1, L2 speakers rarely show native-like processing of this feature in L2. If, however, the feature is also present in L1, L2 speakers can show native-like processing. This finding was, for example, obtained by Jiang (2004) in a self-paced reading task with Chinese learners of L2 English and a native control group. Jiang (2004) found that the Chinese learners were insensitive to number disagreement. This might have to do with the fact that Chinese, contrary to English, lacks morphological number marking. The effect was replicated by Jiang (2007). Similar results on the importance of L1 and L2 similarity for the acquisition of L2 morphology are provided by De Diego Balaguer, Sebastián-Gallés, Díaz, & Rodríguez-Fornells (2005), McDonald (2000), Montrul (2001), Slabakova (2000). The lack of a P600 (and LAN) to subject–verb agreement violations in L2 English processing of Japanese speakers (Ojima et al., 2005) and Chinese speakers (Chen et al., 2007) can probably also be explained by the fact that Japanese and Chinese lack this type of morphological agreement marking. A study by Weber and Lavric (2008), on the other hand, testing German L2 speakers of English on aspects of English verb-morphology also present in German found them indistinguishable from native speakers. As we shall see in the next section, the similarity and presence or absence of morphosyntactic aspects in L1 has also been suggested to play a role in the acquisition of grammatical gender.