Search Results (2)

In different studies dedicated to the acquisition of verbal morphology by bilingual children or by L2 learners, it has been noted that differences in the acquisition process cannot be accounted for by only considering the distance between L1 and L2 morphology. Some forms, such as auxiliaries, may occur in L2 productions without being motivated by L1 morphology. To account for this, the prosodic transfer hypothesis—according to which the acquisition of morphology in the non-dominant language is influenced by the prosody of the dominant language—has been formulated. That prosodic features may influence the acquisition of morphology is interesting as it shows that the acquisition process must be apprehended by considering interfaces and interrelations between the various levels of linguistic description. The aim of this contribution is thus twofold: (i) clarifying to which aspects of prosody prosodic transfer hypothesis refers (specifically, among tonal and metrical prosodic elements, which one comes into play to account for morphological development); and (ii) explaining the importance of considering grammatical interfaces in study on L2 development. To do so, an exploratory study, which relies on the analysis of L2 French narratives produced by two learners with L1 Japanese and two with L1 German, was achieved. This preliminary analysis of the data suggests that metrical structure—more precisely, the nature of the basic metrical unit—may constrain the occurrence of auxiliary and vowel-final forms in the productions of Japanese learners. Full article

In late-insertion, realizational models of morphology such as Distributed Morphology (DM), the insertion of Vocabulary Items (VIs) is conditioned by cyclic operations in the syntax. This paper explores whether an isomorphic relationship can be established between cyclic operations such as phases and prosodic domains. In the spirit of D’Alessandro and Scheer’s (2015) proposal of a Modular Phase Impenetrability Condition (MPIC), we strive to provide an analysis in which prosodic boundaries in even smaller, word-level-like syntactic structures—the ‘lexical domain’—can be identified solely within the syntax. We propose a DM-account for the distribution of nominal plural exponency in German, which reveals a dominant trend for a trochaic-foot structure for all but -s-plural exponents (Wiese 2001, 2009). Inspired by Gouskova’s (2019) and Svenonius’ (2016) work concerning the prosody–morphology interface, we argue that the index of a Prosodic Word $\omega$ in non-s-plurals is associated with a specific feature configuration. We propose that only a n[+pl(ural)] configuration, in which the nominalizing head n hosts the SynSem-feature Num(ber)[+pl(ural)], rather than a general cyclic categorizing phase head such as n, indexes a Prosodic Word $\omega$ for nominal plural exponents in (Standard) German. Based on this empirical evidence from German plural exponency, we argue that (i) prosodic boundaries can be established directly by syntactic structures, (ii) these prosodic boundaries condition VI insertion during the initial stages of Spell-Out, and (iii) prosodic domains are based on individual languages’ syntactic structures and feature configurations, and are thus relativized and language-specific in nature. Full article