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Incomplete Language Acquisition among Young Turkish-German Bilinguals in Germany

Fatih BayramNewcastle University - UK

[email protected]

CRILLSCentre for Research in

Linguistics and LanguageSciences

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Please cite as:

✤ Bayram, F. (2011) Incomplete Language Acquisition Among Young Turkish-German Bilinguals in Germany. Presentation Delivered at11th PALA Symposium - Processability Approaches to Language

Acquisition. Innsbruck, Austria, September 12-13, 2011



Outline

✤ Definition of Incomplete Language Acquisition

✤ Why Processability Theory?

✤ Method and Participants

✤ Incomplete Acquisition of Relative Clause and Passive in Turkish

✤ Conclusion



Background

✤ Several authors point to the fact that there is increasingevidence that bilinguals who have been brought up usingtwo languages do not always converge on the grammars

of native speakers (e.g. Montrul, 2008; Polinsky, 2004,2006; Rothman and Pires, 2009; Treffers-Daller et al, 2007)



Definition of Incomplete L1 Acquisition

✤ Montrul (2008), incomplete L1 acquisition occurs in childhood when,

for different reasons, some specific properties of the language do nothave a chance to reach age-appropriate levels of proficiency afterintense exposure to the L2 begins.

✤ Polinsky (2004) defines incomplete language acquisition as the

acquisition of L1 by a healthy child who starts out either monolingualor dominant in L1 but switches to another language (L2) as primary before age 10. Such speakers, who end up controlling two or morelanguages but are dominant in the language they acquired later (L2),are referred to as “incomplete learners.”



✤ Montrul (2008) explains the phenomena with Ullman’s (2001)

Declarative/Procedural Model, which allocates lexical knowledge todeclarative memory (located in the temporal lobe of the brain) andgrammatical knowledge to procedural memory (located morefrontally).

✤ If L1 acquisition is inhibited early in development, there is a goodchance that not all the necessary syntactic structures would have beenin place before procedural memory started to mature for moreefficient processing, and consequently, declining plasticity.

Previous Research



Previous Research

✤ Daller et al. (2007) studied the use of Turkish complex embeddings amongthree different groups of Turkish-German bilinguals (a group of bilinguals wholive in Germany, a group of returnees who are recorded upon return to Turkey,

and a group of returnees who had been back for eight years upon recording).

✤ The main aim of their study was to clarify the linguistic implications of whatGrosjean (1997, p. 165) has called the complementarity principle: ‘Bilingualsusually acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in differentdomains of life, with different people. Different aspects of life require different

languages.’

✤ They found out that young Turkish-German bilingual adults who were bornand raised in Germany use fewer, and less complex embeddings than Turkishmonolinguals and Turkish-German bilingual returnees who had lived in

Turkey for eight years at the time of recording.



Previous Research

✤ Meisel (2007) investigated the Weaker Language Hypothesis as to whetheracquisition of the WL might fail in at least some domains of grammar under

certain circumstances and, if yes, whether this might resemble second languageacquisition.

✤ The rate of development can indeed be delayed, in some cases quite seriously.Whether this can ultimately lead to incomplete acquisition in that certainphenomena that are typically acquired late will not be acquired anymore, is aquestion that cannot be answered, based on the available research results. Forthe time being, delay must be regarded as a quantitative modification of theprocess of acquisition.

✤ Meisel calls for theoretically formulated and empirically testable claims about

the grammatical domains affected and the external factors causing such effects.



Why Processability Theory?

✤ PT (Pienemann, 1998, 2005) deals with the dynamics of languagedevelopment.

✤ PT predicts different developmental paths for L1 learners and L2learners.

✤

PT can explain the formal conditions of language acquisition and thuscreate falsifiable claims.

✤ Language problems in incomplete learners can be seen as indicatorsof language development.



Method and Participants

✤ Participants are 30 Turkish-German bilinguals who were born inGermany and are 11-14 years old at the moment.

✤ Montrul (2008, p.268) notes that there appears to be a series of biological, physiological, socio-cognitive, neuroanatomical and neuro-

functionally determined changes that occur at, or about, age 9 , whichmay be critical for the solidification or crystallisation of native ordominant language skills, in both monolinguals and bilinguals.



Data collection

✤ Picture story narration task

✤ Passive production task

✤ Question formation task



Picture story narration task

Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969)



Passive Task



Relative Clause Task



Age Structure

By 24months

Inflectional system- both noun and verb inflections are presentin the one-word stage, and there is someevidence for productive use as young as 15months

-Nouns for case (accusative, dative, ablative, possessive,instrumental),

-number (plural),-verbs for tense-aspect (past result, ongoing process, intention)-Person

-Negation-interrogation

word order is used for pragmatic functions- correctly place new information before theverb and presupposed or predictableinformation after the verb.

- simple sentences

2-3 year -Verb inflections for voice and modality-Syntactic means for temporal and casuallinking clauses

-PASSIVE, non-witnessed past tense, conditional, causative-Simple juxtaposition of sentences predominates, without explicitgrammatical markers of connection

-Begin to use connectives that don’t require nominalisations

4-year + -Constructions in which an embeddedsentence is treated as a participle.

-the insertion of nominalised verb forms of various sorts intosentences (RELATIVE CLAUSE and verb complements)- some types of conjoined constructions- revealing a semantically analysis of words into combinable syllables(an obvious prerequisite to the discovery of principles of productivemorphology)

The Course of Linguistic Development in Turkish( Aksu-Koc and Slobin, 1985; Aksu-Koc ̧ 2010; Ketrez, 1999)



Incomplete Processing of RC and Passive inTurkish

- Turkish is an agglutinative language with SOV

as the default word order.

- It is a pro-drop or null-subject language.

- It has got rich nominal and verbal inflection.

Turkish Language

Canonical (default NNV)

Kedi !! yilan-i ! ! isir-(i)yor .

Cat! ! snake-ACC ! bite-PRG -3.SG

“The cat is biting the snake.”



Relative Clause (non canonical)

Subject Relative Clause (-(y)-an)

[KEDI]!! Yilan-i ! ! isir-an ! kedi

[CAT]! ! Snake-ACC ! bite-RC ! cat

“The cat that is biting the snake...”

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! !! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! !! !

Object Relative Clause (-dik)

Kedi-(n)-in! [YILAN]! isir-dig-i! ! yilan

Cat-GEN! [SNAKE]! bite-RC-3SG!! snake

“the snake that the cat is biting”

- In Turkish, RCs are right headed, and there

is no overt complementizer or any overt wh-

element in RCs. In the examples, the head

nouns are the subject and the object of the

RCs. There is a gap in the position

corresponding to the head, and typicallythere are no presumptive pronouns in

Turkish RCs.

- The two types of relativization in the

examples differ from each other with respect

to their internal morphology. The subject is

relativized by the suffix -An added to thepredicative complement without any

agreement morphology. A non-subject

element, in contrast, is relativized by adding

the suffix -DIK on the predicative

complement, which requires conjugation in

accordance with subject agreement

morphology.

- The difficulty in Turkish relative clauses lies

in the deformation of the embedded clause,

which loses the finite verb and normal case

inflections of a canonical main clause.

* Arrows show the required movement.



Sample 1

Sen-de ! kedi! yilan-i ! isir-an !! X! var ! mi?

You-LOC ! cat ! snake-ACC bite-RC ! X! exist! Q?

(Intended “Is there the cat that is biting the snake in your picture?”)

! ! ! ! ! ! !

Sample 2

Sen-de ! bir ! kopek ! var ! mi ! tavsan-i ! kovala-(y)-an ! X! Y?

You-LOC ! a ! dog ! ! exist ! Q ! rabbit-ACC !chase-RC ! ! X ! Y?

(Intended “Is there a dog that is chasing the rabbit in your picture?”)

Sample 3

Sen-de ! bir ! inek! ! var ! mi! ! adam-i ! op-[RC]-(u)-yor! ! X! Y?

You-LOC ! a ! cow! ! exist ! Q ! ! man-ACC ! kiss-[RC]-PRG-3SG ! X! Y?

(Intended “Is there a cow that is kissing the man in your picture?”)

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! !! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Sample 4

Sen-de ! bir! avci ! ! kus-u ! ! vur-[RC]-(u)-yor! ! X! var ! mi?

You-LOC ! a! hunter!! bird-ACC ! shoot-[RC]-PRG-3SG! X! exist !Q?

(Intended “Is there a hunter that is shooting the bird in your picture?”) * Arrows show the required movement.



Passive

Passive (Non-canonical)

Active!! Adam !! agac-i ! sulu-yor

! !! ! Man! ! tree-ACC ! water-PRG-3SG

! ! “The man is watering the tree.”

Passive! Agac! ! [adam ! tarafindan] ! sula-n -(i)-yor.

! ! Tree !! [man-NOM ! by]! ! water-PASS -PRG-3SG

! ! “The tree is being watered [by the man].”

!! ! !! !

- Passive is always agentless in Turkish, and is indicated by a

simple and regular verbal affix. The pragmatic function that itserves is one of focusing on the state of the patient.

- Passive is a non-default mapping and learners need to develop

means for handling non-linearity caused by feature unification,

they need to develop means for handling non-linearity created by

non-default mapping. (Kawaguchi, 2005)



Sample 1

Adam !! agac-i ! sulu-yor.

Man !! tree-ACC ! water-PRG-3.SG

“The man is watering the tree.”

Sample 2

Agac ! ! adam-dan ! sulu-[PASS]-yor.

Tree !! man-ABL ! water-[PASS]-PRG-3.SG

(Literally “Tree is watering from the man”)

(Intended “Tree is being watered by the man”)



Relative Clause Task Number of Chances Number of Production

Furkan (6-year-old, native)15 15

Participants15 2 (average)

Passive Task Number of Chances Number of Production

Furkan (6-year-old, native)15 14

Participants 15 2? (average)



Conclusion (for the moment)

✤ Given the processability perspective, in incomplete Turkish L1acquisition in Germany, it seems that RC and Passive are processed byusing default canonical order (rather than non-canonical), and fail to

exhibit the obligatory morphological and/or syntactic contexts.



References

✤ Aksu-Koç, A., (2010), “The course of normal language development in Turkish.” In S.Topbas and M.Yavas (eds), CommunicationDisorders in Turkish ( Bristol : Multilingual Matters), pp. 65–104.

✤ Aksu-Koç, A. and Slobin, D. (1985). “The acquisition of Turkish.” In D. I. Slobin (Ed). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition.New Jersey, Hillsdale Erlbaum.

✤ Kawaguchi, S. (2005) “Argument structure and syntactic development in Japanese as a second language.” In M. Pienemann. (ed.). Cross-linguistic aspects of Processability Theory. (pp. 253-198). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

✤

Ketrez, F.N. (1999) “Early verbs and the acquisition of Turkish argument structure.” Unpublished MA Dissertation, Bogazici University,Istanbul, Turkey

✤ Meisel, J. (2007). The weaker language in early child bilingualism: Acquiring a first language as a second language. AppliedPsycholinguistics 28, 495–514.

✤ Montrul, S. (2008) Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

✤ Pienemann, M. (1998) Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

✤ Pienemann M, (2005) Cross-Linguistic Aspects of Processability Theory. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins Publishing Company

✤ Pienemann, M., Di Biase, B. & Kawaguchi, S. (2005). “Extending Processability theory.” In M. Pienemann (ed.) Cross-linguistic aspects of

Processability Theory. (pp.199-251). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.✤ Pires, A and Rothman, J. (2009) Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across

heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13: 211-238.

✤ Polinsky, M. (2004) “World class distinctions in an incomplete grammar.” In Dorid Ravid, ed. Perspectives on language and languagedevelopment, 423-438. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

✤ Polinsky, M. (2006) Incomplete acquisition: American Russian, Journal of Slavic Linguistics 14(2): 191-262

✤ Treffers-Daller, Jeanine & Sumru Özsoy & Roeland van Hout (2007) (In)complete acquisition of Turkish among Turkish-Germanbilinguals in Germany and Turkey: an analysis of complex embeddings in narratives. International Journal of Bilingualism and BilingualEducation, 10 (3), 248-276.

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