The Interpretability Hypothesis: evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition

By Ianthi M. Tsimpli, M. Dimitrakopoulou. 2007

436 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation between syntactic knowledge and morpho(pho)nology. In particular, Lardiere (1998), Prévost and White (2000), and Goad and White (2004) claim that highly proficient learners have knowledge of the abstract syntactic properties of the language but occasionally fail to associate them with the correct morphological or phonological forms. On the other hand, theories that support partial availability of Universal Grammar (UG) (Tsimpli and Roussou 1991; Hawkins and Chan, 1997) argue for a problem in the syntax: while UG principles and operations are available in SLA, the formal features of the target language that are not instantiated in the L1 or have a different setting, cause learnability problems. This article discusses acquisitional data in the light of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007), which is a reformulation of the SLA theory suggested by Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) in minimalist terms. It is argued that a minimalist approach to SLA can be implemented to specify the status of the features that are least accessible to re-setting in the SLA process, given (1) constraints on their learnability and (2), their setting in the L1 grammar. The phenomenon discussed concerns the use of the resumptive strategy in wh- subject and object extraction by intermediate and advanced Greek learners of English. It is proposed that the acceptability rate of pronouns in the extraction site is conditioned by the Logical Form (LF) interpretability of the features involved in the derivation. Hence, the interpretable features of animacy and discourse-linking are hypothesized to be involved in the analysis of English pronouns by Greek L2 learners, while the first language (L1) specification of resumptive pronouns as clusters of uninterpretable Case and Agreement features resists resetting.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f24b50b75ca777230a378fbb074d3ffa99f5b161

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Language and Linguistics

Citations in the corpus

A systematic review of transfer studies in third language acquisition (2018, background): “…(e.g., Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, 2009; Bylund, Abrahamsson, and Hyltenstam, 2012; Clahsen and Felser, 2006; DeKeyser, 2000; Granena and Long, 2013; Hawkins and Casillas, 2008; Hawkins and Chan, 1997; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Long, 2005; Sorace, 2011; Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).”
Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition (2009, background): “out by Webelhuth (1995), Hegarty (2005), Zeijlstra (2006) and others, the universal inventory of”
Learning (not) to predict: Grammatical gender processing in second language acquisition (2016, background): “…have difficulty in representing new abstract grammatical (gender) features in their L2 (Representational Deficit Hypothesis; Hawkins and Chan, 1997; Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007); (2) that gender features are underspecified (e.g. Hawkins and Casillas, 2008; McCarthy, 2008); (3) that L2…”
Morphological Structure in Native and Nonnative Language Processing (2010, background): “…have argued that morphosyntactic features, including those relevant for agreement and case marking, are only accessible to adult L2 learners if they are instantiated in their L1, but not if they are not present in their L1 (e.g., Hawkins & Casillas, 2008; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).”
Processing tense/aspect-agreement violations on-line in the second language: A self-paced reading study with French and German L2 learners of English (2013, background): “…(e.g. Lardiere, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Prévost and White, 2000; Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996; Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1996a) or whether it is only partially available (e.g. Hawkins and Chan, 1997; Hawkins and Liszka, 2003; Hawkins et al., 2008; Tsimpli, 2003; Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).”
MORPHOLOGICAL ERRORS IN SPANISH SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS AND HERITAGE SPEAKERS (2011, neutral): “…differences between native and nonnative speakers or between L1 acquisition by children and SLA by adults (Bley-Vroman, 1989 , 2009 ; Clahsen & Muysken, 1986 ; DeKeyser, 2000 ; Long, 2007 ; Meisel, 1997 ; Paradis, 2009 ; Schachter, 1990 ; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007 ; Ullman, 2001 ).”
Plural-marking in L2 Korean: A feature-based approach (2013, background): “Here we might also point out that theories that propose that acquiring new uninterpretable features is impossible in adult second language acquisition, such as the Interpretability Hypothesis (e.g. Franceschina, 2005; Hawkins and Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007; Tsimpli and Mastropa”
Morphosyntactic processing in advanced second language (L2) learners: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of L1–L2 similarity and structural distance (2014, background): “A more recent version of this proposal, the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007), makes different predictions for the acquisition of interpretable versus uninterpretable features.”
Early language experience facilitates the processing of gender agreement in Spanish heritage speakers* (2013, background): “…between L1 acquisition by children, which under normal circumstances always results in native-like knowledge, and L2 acquisition by adults, which does not guarantee uniform success (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009; DeKeyser, 2000; Long, 2007; Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).”
Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) of third language (L3) transfer: Timing of acquisition and proficiency considered* (2013, background): “Iverson (2009, 2010) asked whether transfer patterns at the initial stages of L3 can tell us anything about adults’ ability to acquire new syntactic features not instantiated in the L1 in contra the claims of the Interpretablity Hypothesis (IH; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).”