Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T05:23:09.224Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

INTRODUCTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2007

Yasuhiro Shirai  and
Hiromi Ozeki
Yasuhiro Shirai
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Hiromi Ozeki
Affiliation:
University of Tokyo
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Typological linguistics has made important contributions to our understanding of SLA processes, especially in the early days of SLA research (e.g., Eckman, 1977; Hyltenstam, 1977; Rutherford, 1984). In particular, the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH), originally proposed as a generalization based on typological work by Keenan and Comrie (1977), has served as a basis on which many SLA studies are conducted. The NPAH predicts the ease of relativization as a function of the grammatical role of the head noun phrase (NP) modified by the relative clause (RC) observed in languages of the world: subject (SU) > direct object (DO) > indirect object (IO) > oblique (OBL) > genitive (GEN) > object of comparison (OComp). If a language can relativize on a position on the hierarchy, then it follows that any other higher position (or position to the left in the given schematic) can also be relativized on. For example, if a language has an OComp relative (e.g., the man who I am taller than), then it has a GEN relative (e.g., the man whose father I know) and all of the others higher on the hierarchy (i.e., OBL, IO, DO, and SU).

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 155 - 167
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bates, E. & MacWhinney, B. (1982). Functionalist approaches to grammar. In E. Wanner & L. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 173–218). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Braidi, S. M. (1999). The acquisition of second-language syntax. London: Arnold.
Bybee, J. L. (1985). Morphology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Clancy, P., Lee, H., & Zoh, M. (1986). Processing strategies in the acquisition of RCs: Universal principles and language-specific relativizations. Cognition, 14, 225–262.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1996). The unity of noun-modifying clauses in Asian languages. In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Pan-Asiatic Linguistics (pp. 1077–1088). Salaya, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University of Salaya.
Comrie, B. (1998). Attributive clauses in Asian languages: Towards an areal typology. In W. Boeder, C. Schroeder, K. H. Wagner, & W. Wildgen (Eds.), Sprache in Raum und Zeit: In memoriam Johannes Bechert, Band 2 (pp. 51–60). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Comrie, B. (2002). Typology and language acquisition: The case of relative clauses. In A. Giacalone Ramat (Ed.), Typology and second language acquisition (pp. 19–37). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Croft, W. (2001). Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Croteau, K. C. (1995). Second language acquisition of relative clause structures by learners of Italian. In F. R. Eckman, D. Highland, P. W. Lee, J. Mileham, & R. R. Weber (Eds.), Second language acquisition theory and pedagogy (pp. 115–128). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Diessel, H. & Tomasello, M. (2000). The development of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 131–151.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. & Tomasello, M. (2005). A new look at the acquisition of relative clauses. Language, 81, 1–25.Google Scholar
Doughty, C. J. (1991). Second language instruction does make a difference: Evidence from an empirical study of SL relativization. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 431–469.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R. (1977). Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning, 27, 315–330.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R. (2004a). Universals, innateness and explanation in second language acquisition. Studies in Language, 28, 682–703.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R. (2004b). Author's response: ‘External’ universals and explanation in SLA. Studies in Language, 28, 707–709.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. R., Bell, L., & Nelson, D. (1988). On the generalization of relative clause instruction in the acquisition of English as a second language. Applied Linguistics, 9, 1–20.Google Scholar
Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gass, S. (1979). Language transfer and universal grammatical relations. Language Learning, 29, 327–344.Google Scholar
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An introductory course (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hakuta, K. (1981). Grammatical description versus configurational arrangement in language acquisition: The case of relative clauses in Japanese. Cognition, 9, 197–236.Google Scholar
Hamilton, R. L. (1995). The noun phrase accessibility hierarchy in SLA: Determining the basis for its developmental effects. In F. R. Eckman, D. Highland, P. W. Lee, J. Mileham, & R. R. Weber (Eds.), Second language acquisition theory and pedagogy (pp. 101–114). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hansen-Strain, L. & Strain, J. E. (1989). Variation in the relative clause of Japanese learners. JALT Journal, 11, 211–237.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hawkins, J. A. (1999). Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammars. Language, 75, 244–285.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R. (1989). Do second language learners acquire restrictive relative clauses on the basis of relational or configurational information? The acquisition of French subject, direct object and genitive restrictive relative clauses by second language learners. Second Language Research, 5, 158–188.Google Scholar
Hirose, Y. (2006). Processing of relative clauses in Japanese: Coping with multiple ambiguities. In M. Nakayama, R. Mazuka, & Y. Shirai (Eds.), Handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics: Vol. 2. Japanese (pp. 264–269). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, P. J. (1997). When ‘grammar’ and discourse clash: The problem of source conflicts. In J. Bybee, J. Hyman, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Essays on language function and language type: Dedicated to Talmy Givón (pp. 231–247). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Hsiao, F. & Gibson, E. (2003). Processing relative clauses in Chinese. Cognition, 90, 3–27.Google Scholar
Hyltenstam, K. (1977). Implicational patterns in interlanguage syntax variation. Language Learning, 27, 383–411.Google Scholar
Hyltenstam, K. (1984). The use of typological markedness conditions as predictors in second language acquisition: The case of pronominal copies in relative clauses. In R. W. Andersen (Ed.), Second languages: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 39–60). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Izumi, S. (2003). Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative clauses by learners of English as a second language. Language Learning, 53, 285–323.Google Scholar
Jeon, K. (2004). Interaction-driven learning: Characterizing linguistic development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Jin, H.-G. (1994). Topic-prominence and subject-prominence in L2 acquisition: Evidence of English-to-Chinese typological transfer. Language Learning, 44, 101–122.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. (1975). Variation in Universal Grammar. In R. Fasold & R. Shuy (Eds.), Analyzing variation in language (pp. 136–148). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Keenan, E. & Comrie, B. (1977). Noun phrase accessibility and Universal Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 63–99.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. & Hawkins, S. (1987). The psychological validity of the accessibility hierarchy. In E. Keenan (Ed.), Universal Grammar: Fifteen essays (pp. 60–85). London: Routledge.
Larsen-Freeman, D. & Long, M. H. (1991). An introduction to second language acquisition research. London: Longman.
Lin, C.-J. C., Fong, S., & Bever, T. G. (2005). Constructing filler-gap dependencies in Chinese possessor relative clauses. In Proceedings of the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Language, Information, and Computation (pp. 143–154). Taipei: Academia Sinica.
Long, M. H. & Doughty, C. J. (2003). SLA and cognitive science. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 866–870). Oxford: Blackwell.
Mak, W., Vonk, W., & Schriefers, H. (2002). The influence of animacy on relative clause processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 50–68.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1988). Semantics and pragmatics of noun-modifying constructions in Japanese. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 14, 166–175.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1997). Noun-modifying constructions in Japanese: A frame-semantic approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Matthews, S. & Yip, V. (2002). Relative clauses in early bilingual development: Transfer and universals. In A. Giacalone Ramat (Ed.), Typology and second language acquisition (pp. 39–81). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
McClelland, J. L. & Patterson, K. (2002). Rules or connections in past-tense inflections: What does the evidence rule out? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 465–472.Google Scholar
Mellow, D. (2006). The emergence of second language syntax: A case study of the acquisition of relative clauses. Applied Linguistics, 27, 620–644.Google Scholar
Mitchell, R. & Myles, F. (2004). Second language learning theories (2nd ed.). London: Arnold.
Miyamoto, E. & Nakamura, M. (2003). Subject/object asymmetries in the processing of RCs in Japanese. In G. Garding & M. Tsujimura (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 342–355). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
O'Grady, W., Lee, M., & Choo, M. (2003). A subject-object asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses in Korean as a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 433–448.Google Scholar
Ozeki, H. (2004). Nihongo gakusyuusya no rentai syuusyoku koozoo syuutoku katei: syuusyokusetu no zyootaisei no kanten kara [Does a modifier's stativity predict developmental sequence of noun-modifying construction in L2 Japanese?]. Nihongo Kyooiku [Journal of Japanese Language Teaching], 121, 36–45.
Ozeki, H. (2005). Daiiti daini gengo ni okeru nihongo meisi syuusyokusetu no syuutoku katei: Ruikeiron teki apurooti [The acquisition process of Japanese noun-modifying clauses by first and second language learners: A typological approach]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo.
Ozeki, H. & Shirai, Y. (2005). Semantic bias in the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese. In A. Brugos, M. R. Clark-Cotton, & S. Ha (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development: Vol. 2 (pp. 459–470). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Ozeki, H. & Shirai, Y. (2007). The consequences of variation in the acquisition of relative clauses: An analysis of longitudinal production data from five Japanese children. In Y. Matsumoto, D. Oshima, O. Robinson, & P. Sells (Eds.), Diversity in language: Perspectives and implications (pp. 243–270). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Pavesi, M. (1986). Markedness, discoursal models, and relative clause formation in a formal and informal context. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8, 38–55.Google Scholar
Perkins, R. D. (1992). Deixis, grammar, and culture. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules. New York: Basic Books.
Polio, C. & Gass, S. (1997). Replication and reporting: A commentary. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 499–508.Google Scholar
Rutherford, W. (Ed.). (1984). Language universals and second language acquisition. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Schumann, J. H. (1980). The acquisition of English relative clauses by second language learners. In R. C. Scarcella & S. Krashen (Eds.), Research in second language acquisition: Selected papers of the Los Angeles Second Language Research Forum (pp. 118–131). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Shirai, Y. & Kurono, A. (1998). The acquisition of tense-aspect marking in Japanese as a second language. Language Learning, 48, 245–279.Google Scholar
Silva, R. & Clahsen, H., (in press). Morphologically complex words in L1 and L2 processing: Evidence from masked priming experiments in English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.
Tarallo, F. & Myhill, J. (1983). Interference and natural language in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 33, 55–76.Google Scholar
Tavakolian, S. (1981). The conjoined-clause analysis of relative clauses. In S. Tavakolian (Ed.), Language acquisition and linguistic theory (pp. 167–187). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ullman, M. T. (2005). A cognitive neuroscience perspective on second language acquisition: The declarative/procedural model. In C. Sanz (Ed.), Mind and context in adult second language acquisition: Methods, theory, and practice (pp. 141–178). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
White, L. (2004). ‘Internal’ versus ‘external’ universals: Commentary on Eckman. Studies in Language, 28, 704–706.Google Scholar
Wolfe-Quintero, K. (1992). Learnability and the acquisition of extraction in relative clauses and wh-questions. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 39–70.Google Scholar