Word Order variation in L1 and L2 Italian speakers: the role of Focus and the Unaccusativity Hierarchy
Abstract
This paper investigates the Italian Word Order variation in the position of subjects (S) with respect to finite predicates (V) in two adult populations: L1-Italian speakers and L1-French L2-Italian speakers. We test how discourse focus (Belletti, 2001) and a decomposed approach to Unaccusativity, i.e., Unaccusativity Hierarchy (Sorace, 2000), determine the SV/VS variation in L1 and L2 populations. The results of a forced-choice preference task show that both factors constrain the Italian word order in L1 and L2 Italian speakers: the VS order was preferred in the narrow focus and with Change of Location unaccusative verbs in both populations, although with different proportions. Overall L2 speakers chose the SV order more consistently than L1 speakers but they did so mainly with the less-core unaccusative verbs of the Unaccusativity Hierarchy. We account for these findings suggesting a return to the original version of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2005), which predicts that interface phenomena, including those at the syntax-lexicon interface, represent a vulnerable domain in L2 acquisition.
Keywords
Adult L2 acquisition, Focus, Unaccusativity hierarchy, Word order variation, Italian, French, Interface hypothesis, Lexical semanticsReferences
Belletti, Adriana. 2001. Inversion as focalization. In A. Hulk, & J.Y. Pollock (ed.), Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar, 60–90. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Belletti, Adriana. 2004. Aspects of the Low IP Area. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The Structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures. Volume 2. 16–51. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Belletti, Adriana., & Leonini, Chiara. 2004. Subject inversion in L2 Italian. In S. Foster-Cohen, M. Sharwood, A. Sorace, & M.Ota (eds.), Eurosla Yearkbook. Volume 4, 95–118. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.4.06bel
Belletti, Adriana, Bennati Elisa, & Sorace Antonella. 2007. Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25: 657–689. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-007-9026-9
Belletti, Adriana. 2008. The CP of Clefts. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 33: 191–204.
Belletti, Adriana, & Bianchi, Valentina, 2016. Definiteness effect and unaccusative subjects: an overview and some new thoughts. In S. Fischer, T. Kupisch, & E. Rinker (eds.), Definiteness Effects: Bilingual, Typological and Diachronic Variation, 14–65, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Benincà, Paola, & Poletto, Cecilia. 2004. Topic, Focus and V2: Defining the CP Sublayers. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The Structure of IP and CP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, 52–75. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bentley, Delia, & Cruschina, Silvio. 2018). The silent argument of broad focus: Typology and predictions, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1): 118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.677
Bertinetto, Pier Marco, 1986. Tempo, aspetto e azione nel sistema verbale italiano. Il sistema dell’indicativo. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.
Bianchi, Valentina, Bocci, Giuliano & Cruschina Silvio. 2017. Two types of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 62(3):233-252.
Bruhn de Garavito, Joyce, & Valenzuela, Elena. 2006. The Status of Ser and Estar in Late and Early Bilingual L2 Spanish. In C. A. Klee, & T. L. Face (eds), Selected Proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages, 100–109. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Caloi, Irene, Belletti, Adriana, & Poletto, Cecilia. 2018. Multilingual competence influences answering strategies in Italian-German speakers, Frontiers in Psychology 9: 1971. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01971
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2004. Toward a cartography of subject positions. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The structure of CP and IP. The cartography of syntactic structures. Volume 2, 115–165. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2018. On different types of postverbal subjects in Italian. In Aronoff, M., Bertinetto, M., Loporcaro M. (eds), Italian Journal of Linguistics 30(2), 79-106.
Carlier, Anne. 2005. L’argument davidsonien: un critère de distinction entre les prédicats ‘‘stage level’’ et les prédicats ‘‘individual level’’? Travaux de Linguistique 1(50): 13– 35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/tl.050.0013
Cornish, Francis. 2005. A cross-linguistic study of so-called ‘locative inversion’: evidence for the functional discourse grammar model. In C.D Groot, & K. Hengeveld (eds.), Morphosyntactic Expression in Functional Grammar. 163–202. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Sprouse, Rex, & Anderson, Bruce. 1997. The Interpretive Interface in L2 Acquisition: The Process-Result Distinction in English French Interlanguage Grammars. Language Acquisition 6: 297–332. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la0604_2
Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Sprouse, Rex, & Swanson, Kim. 2001. Reflexes of Mental Architecture in Second-Language Acquisition: The Interpretation of Discontinuous Combien Extractions in English French Interlanguage. Language Acquisition 9: 175–227. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327817LA0903_1
Destruel, Emilie. 2013. An Empirical Study on the Meaning and Use of the French c’est-Cleft. Ph.D thesis, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Domínguez, Laura. 2013. Understanding interfaces: Second language acquisition and first language attrition of Spanish subject realization and word order variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro & Marinis, Theo. 2007. Acquiring phenomena at the syntax/semantics interface in L2 Spanish: The personal preposition a. In L. Roberts, A. Guerel., S. Tatar, & L. Marti. (eds.), Eurosla Yearbook 7, 67– 87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.7.06gui
Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel, 2002. Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Iverson, Mike & Rothman, Jason. (2008). The Syntax-Semantics Interface in L2 Acquisition: Genericity and Inflected Infinitive Complements in Non-Native Portuguese. In J. Bruhn de Garavito, & E. Valenzuela (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 78–92. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Jaeggli, Osvaldo, & Safir, Ken. 1989. The null subject parameter and parametric theory. In O. Jaeggli &K. Safir (eds.), The null subject parameter, 1–44. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Jones, Michael Allan. 1996. Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge/New York.
Kayne, Richard. 1993. Toward a modular theory of auxiliary selection. Studia Linguistica 47:3-31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.1993.tb00837.x
Koopman, Hilda, & Sportiche, Dominique. 1991. The Position of Subjects. Lingua 85: 211-285. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(91)90022-W
Kupisch, Tanja. & Rothman, Jason. 2016. Interfaces with syntax in language acquisition. In S. Fischer and C. Gabriel (eds.), Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance, 551–585. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Larson, Richard. 1988. On the double object construction, Linguistic Inquiry 19: 335-391.
Lahousse, Karen. 2003. The Distribution of Postverbal Nominal Subjects in French. A Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. PhD Thesis, Université de Louvain & Université Paris 8, Paris.
Lahousse, Karen. 2011. Quand passent les cigognes. Le sujet nominal postverbal en français contemporain. Paris: Presses Universitaires Vincennes.
Lahousse, Karen. & Lamiroy, Béatrice. 2012. Word order in French, Spanish and Italian: A grammaticalization account. Folia Linguistica 46(2): 387-416. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2012.014
Legendre, Geraldine, & Sorace, Antonella. 2003. Auxiliaires et intransitivité en français et dans les langues romanes. In D. Godard. (ed.), Les langues romanes: Problèmes de la phrase simple, 185-225. Paris: CNRS Edition.
Legendre, G. 2007. On the typology of auxiliary selection. Lingua 117: 1522- 1540. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.06.005
Levin, Beth., & Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Listanti, Andrea, & Torregrossa, Jacopo. (under review). The development of postverbal subjects in L2 Italian: A multifactorial corpus analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.
Listanti, Andrea, & Torregrossa, Jacopo. (accepted). Matching teaching and learning sequences: L2-acquisition of the interaction between complex noun phrases, word order and information structure. In S. Spina & H. Tyne (eds.), Applying corpora in teaching and learning Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Marotta, Giovanna & Vanelli, Laura. (2021). Fonologia e prosodia dell’italiano. Roma: Carocci Editore.
Perlmutter, David. 1978. Impersonal passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Berkeley Linguistic Society 4: 157–189.
Pinto, Manuela. 1997. Licensing and Interpretation of inverted subjects in Italian. Ph.D thesis, Utrecht, Netherlands, UiL: OTS Dissertation series.
R Core Team 2021. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A first Phase Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986. Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 501-557.
Roberts, Ian & Kallulli, Diana. 2022. Defectivity and auxiliary syncretism: diachronic aspects. Paper presented at the 23rd Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference. New York University, June 8-10, 2022.
Rothman, Jason. 2008. How pragmatically odd! Interface delays and pronominal subject distribution in L2 Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 1(2): 317–340. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2008-1022
Serratrice, Ludovica., Sorace, Antonella., Filiaci, Francesca, & Baldo, Michela. 2009. Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12(2): 239–257. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728909004027
Slabakova, Roumyana, & Ivanov, Ivan. 2011. A more careful look at the syntax–discourse interface. Lingua 121: 637–651. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.05.003
Slabakova, Roumyana, Rothman, Jason, & Kempchinsky, Paula. 2012. Clitic-doubled left dislocation and focus fronting in L2 Spanish: A case of successful acquisition at the syntax– discourse interface. Second Language Research 28: 319–343. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658312447612
Sorace, Antonella. 2000. Gradients in Auxiliary Selection with Intransitive Verbs. Language 76 (4): 859–890. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/417202
Sorace, Antonella. 2005. Selective optionality in language development. In L. Cornips, & K.P. Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social, 55–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sorace, Antonella, & Filiaci, Francesca. 2006. Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research 22(3): 339–368. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1191/0267658306sr271oa
Sorace, Antonella, & Serratrice, Ludovica. 2009. Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism 13 (2): 195–210. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006909339810
Sorace, Antonella. 2011. Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1: 1–33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.1.1.01sor
Tsimpli, Ianthi & Sorace, Antonella. 2006. Differentiating Interfaces: L2 Performance in Syntax-Semantics and Syntax-Discourse Phenomena. Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development 30 (2): 653-664.
Vernice, Mirta & Sorace, Antonella. 2018. Animacy effects on the processing of intransitive verbs: an eye-tracking study. Language Cognition and Neuroscience 33(1): 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2017.1421316
White, Lydia. 2003. Fossilization in Steady State L2 Grammars: Persistent problems with inflectional morphology. Bilingualism Language and Cognition 6: 129–141. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728903001081
White, Lydia. 2009. Grammatical theory: Interfaces and L2 knowledge. In W. Ritchie & T. Bhatia (eds.), The new handbook of second language acquisition, 49–68. Leeds: Emerald Group.
White, Lydia. 2011. Second language acquisition at the interfaces. Lingua 121 (4): 577– 590. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010
Published
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2022 Caterina Tasinato, Emanuela Sanfelici
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
