Peter Jordens

The acquisition of verb placement in Dutch and German

German and Dutch are assumed to have SO V as basic word order. In main clauses, however, the finite verb occurs in first or second position. Verb placement in main clauses is determined by a rule of verb fronting. Research on the acquisition of verb placement in German and Dutch has focused on how children find out about the rule of verb fronting. Clahsen and Muysken (1986), Clahsen (1988b), and De Haan (1987) have claimed that the acquisition of the verb-fronting rule is developmentally related to the acquisition of the morphological paradigm for subject-verb agreement. Correct agreement marking should lead to a sudden increase in the use of verb forms in first!second position. I present an analysis of Dutch data that shows that the acquisition of verb fronting is not a sudden process at all. For a rather long period of time there are distributional, that is, morphological and semantic, differences between verbal elements in first/second versus final position and there is minimal overlap between the verb forms used in the two positions. I propose that for children to acquire the verb-fronting rule, they have to learn to SEMANTICALLY differentiate between complex predicates with auxiliaries or modals and the corresponding predicates with simple verb forms.

Finiteness in children and adults learning Dutch

This paper deals with the acquisition of finiteness in children acquiring Dutch as their first language and adults acquiring Dutch as their second language. The authors distinguish between the semantic concept of finiteness and its morpho-syntactic marking. Given that utterances are used to express illocutionary force, they argue that finiteness is the carrier of the pragmatic function of assertion. As such it relates the descriptive content of an utterance to its topic component. It is shown that for the expression of finiteness child and adult learners rely on this pragmatic function of assertion at subsequent stages of acquisition. At the so-called Conceptual Ordering Stage, i.e. before target-adequate morphological markings become productive, learners establish the assertive relation by a closed class of linking elements which contains elements expressing positive or negative assertion, modal phrases and scope particles. At the Finite Linking Stage assertion marking grammaticalises. Elements of the target functional category of auxiliaries come to be used as a grammatical linking device whereas scope particles and other target adverbial elements do no longer occur as independent linking elements. While the illocutionary linking elements of the Conceptual Ordering Stage are adjuncts, auxiliary verbs are part of a functional category system. As is the case in the target language, they function as the head of a head-complement structure at the Finite Linking Stage.

Language acquisition and the functional category system

Finiteness as a concept of information structure determines the perspective from which the present investigation has been carried out. The linguistic status of finiteness in learner languages changes as a function of language development. This accounts for the fact that at consecutive stages of acquisition finiteness is expressed differently. Finiteness, as it plays a role at different stages of development, serves thus as the anchoring point from which the dynamics of the process of language development both in L1 and L2 learners can be explained. The present study shows that in this process the auxiliary verb (heb/heeft) serves a crucial role due to its function as a topicalization device.

Functional categories in learner language

Research on spontaneous processes of language acquisition has shown that early learner systems are based on lexical structures. At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like functional category system. This work deals with the driving forces behind the acquisition of the functional properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement.

Constraints on the shape of second language learner varieties

Abstract Recently, competing views have been put forward to account for the shape of second language learner varieties. The discussion has focussed on the role of L1 knowledge, the accessibility of universal constraints on linguistic structure and cognitive principles of language learning. Contradicting claims have been made with respect to L1 transfer, driving forces in L2 development and fossilization. In the discussion, however, relevant findings from earlier research seem to be missing. Transfer, for example, is not a random process. Constraints on transfer can be described in terms of structural similarities and dissimilarities between L1 and the L2 target equivalent. Furthermore, findings from studies on acquisitional ordering are of relevance for the investigation of driving forces in L2 development. Finally, studies comparing adult and child language acquisition have provided evidence for the interaction between input processing and fossilization.