Prof.

Safieh Moghaddam
Assistant Professor
Department of Language Studies
University of Toronto, Scarborough

LINA02:
Application of Linguistics
Week 5 - Second Language
Acquisition
All materials presented are subject to copyright. Students may not distribute the slides outside the course.
Second Language Acquisition

◉ In the last two weeks we looked at the incredible speed and accuracy
with which children acquire their first language(s)

◉ Now, living in a multicultural society, we may wonder about the

processes used in languages learning

◉ Specifically adult learners of a second language

◉ Disclaimer: while we call the field “Second Language Acquisition” ,it is

not limited to looking at second languages
○ We consider third, fourth, etc. languages
2
Questions…

◉ How many of you speak more than one

language?

◉ How many of these languages did you begin

learning after the age of 13?

◉ Think of some of the difficulties you faced when

trying to learn a new language
3
Introduction: Interlanguage
◉ While second language speakers may not have a native
speaker-like grammar, their languages still have grammar
○ Humans are very good at systematic learning and
organization of languages

◉ We call this Interlanguage (IL) Grammar

◉ Much like the grammar of native speakers, IL is a mental

grammar that is shaped by the learner’s L1 and L2

4
Interlanguage Continued
◉ When L1 features appear in L2, we call this transfer

◉ Eventually interlanguage stabilizes and does not undergo

many changes – Fossilization
○ Arguably fossilized interlanguage is not completely
frozen or unchangeable
○ The rate of IL change simply plateaus/becomes
slower

5
Native Proficiency VS. Communicative Competence
◉ While we agree that L2 learners may not develop a
native speaker’s internal grammar of a target language,
what does it really mean to be proficient in a language?

◉ Should speakers have an understanding of linguistic

properties of the language?

◉ Should speakers be able to hold a conversation and be

understood?
6
Native Proficiency VS. Communicative Competence
◉ Ideally, any speaker of a language should be able to do any of the
following:

1. Textual Competence: appropriately stringing words and sentences

together

2. Sociolinguistic Competence: appropriately using intonation,tone

and other language features based on the social situation
(formal/informal speech, etc.)

3. Illocutionary Competence: appropriately

conveying/understanding the meaning of strings 7
Variation In Performance
◉ An L2 speaker’s performance is systematic, but it does
not always appear to be consistent

◉ Recall that competence is a speaker’s

internal/idealized/mental knowledge of a language.

◉ A speaker’s performance is the actual use of language

(their output)

8
Variation In Performance
◉ Consider the following example:
○ “I didn’t like that movie so I told her I no want to go
dere”

◉ We can see that speakers may produce negation correctly

and later revert to “ungrammatical” structures

◉ The same applies to the phonetic realization of certain

sounds
○ I.e. this speaker is having difficulty with interdental
fricatives 9
Variation In Performance
◉ Linguistic performance is in many ways the result of controlled
and automatic processing

◉ Learning a skill (or a language) is very controlled at first

○ There is a lot of cognitive demand involved in learning

◉ Eventually a skill becomes automatic, however when faced

with multiple strenuous tasks, L2 speakers become unable to
access certain automatic process (phonology for instance)

◉ The outcome of this overload is variation in performance

10
Interlanguage Grammars: Phonology

◉ We will begin our journey into interlanguage grammars

with phonology

◉ Recall that every language comes with its own

segmental inventory

◉ L2 learners need to pay close attention to L2 contrasts,

especially if they do not exist in their L1(s)
11
Phonology

◉ Differences in phonological inventories result in accents

◉ Accents are a result of phonetic/phonological transfer from L1

◉ For instance, speakers of Slavic languages will tend to replace /θ ð/

with [s z] since interdentals do not exist in these languages

◉ We also see emergence of transfer in loanwords

○ E.g. psyche [sajki] from Greek ψῡχή psukhe
○ Notice that English does not have a [ps] cluster, thus being
deleted
12
Markedness Differential Hypothesis

◉ Markedness is a factor influencing how well an L2 speaker

acquires foreign phonemes

◉ Markedness Differential Hypothesis – L2 learners will have

more difficulty with marked structures (e.g. phonemes)

◉ Recall that marked structures are less common than

unmarked ones
○ E.g. /ð/ is more marked than /d/
13
Similarity Differential Rate Hypothesis

◉ Similarity Differential Rate Hypothesis – the rate of

acquisition of structures that are less similar will be faster
than of structures that are more similar to a speaker’s L1

◉ This is another way of looking at how L2 learners acquire

phonology and other structures

◉ The further away something is from L1, the quicker it will be

acquired
14
L2 Syntax

◉ Just like with phonology, L2 speakers need to adapt

their syntactic structures to fit the L2 they are learning

◉ We will consider the following syntactic concept:

○ Null Subject Parameter

15
Null Subject Parameter

◉ Null Subject Parameter – determines whether a

language can or cannot drop the subject of any given
sentence

◉ Take for instance English:

○ We can say “I drink tea” but not *“drink tea”
○ Russian, on the other hand, allows both “ja pju
chai” and “pju chai” to mean “(I) drink tea”
16
Null Subject Parameter

◉ Allowance of null subjects may become problematic

when such speakers encounter languages that need
subjects

◉ Such L2 learners will need to “reset” their parameters

to proficiently learn a new language

17
Question Formation

1. I tell you what did happen

2. I don’t know where do you live.

18
Positive & Negative Evidence

◉ Different types of evidence (linguistic output/observations) help L2

speakers form their interlanguage grammars:

◉ Positive Evidence – utterances a speaker is exposed to

○ E.g. an English speaker learning Spanish will quickly learn that the
language allows null subjects, forcing the learner to adapt

◉ Negative Evidence – absence of a particular structure in speech

○ E.g. a Spanish speaker will never encounter subject-less sentences in
English; however, the learner will not know if subject-less sentences
are grammatical in English due to lack of evidence

19
Direct Vs Indirect Negative Evidence

◉ In the case of negative evidence, speakers may need to be

told that a specific structure is ungrammatical in a target
language– Direct Negative Evidence

◉ In other cases, speakers may infer that absence of certain

structures in native speakers’ language means these structures
are ungrammatical – Indirect Negative Evidence

20
L2 Morphology

◉ Recall the developmental order of morphemes in L1 acquisition:

1. -ing
2. Plural -s
3. Irregular Past
4. Possessive -’s
5. Copula be
6. Articles
7. Regular Past
8. 3rd Person Singular -s
9. Auxiliary be
21
L2 Morphology

◉ Compare L1 development with L2 morphology:

1. -ing
2. Copula be
3. Articles
4. Auxiliary be
5. Plural -s
6. Irregular Past
7. Regular Past
8. 3rd Person Singular -s
9. Possessive -’s
22
L2 Morphology

◉ Notice that auxiliaries and copula are acquired earlier in L2

◉ The possessive –‘s is learned much later in L2

◉ These differences are once again attributed to the amount of

processing power required to produce them

◉ Possessives and 3 person singular –s require processing on phrase

levels!
○ E.g. A speaker needs to consider both the subject and the verb in
order to correctly mark the subject-verb agreement (hard)
23