25.2292, Review: Language Acquisition; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics: Blom, Verhagen & van de Craats (2013)

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Subject: 25.2292, Review: Language Acquisition; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics: Blom, Verhagen & van de Craats (2013)

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Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 14:27:06
From: Eugenio Goria [eugenio.goria at gmail.com]
Subject: Dummy Auxiliaries in First and Second Language Acquisition

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-3331.html

EDITOR: Elma  Blom
EDITOR: Josje  Verhagen
EDITOR: Ineke  van de Craats
TITLE: Dummy Auxiliaries in First and Second Language Acquisition
SERIES TITLE: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] 49
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Eugenio Goria, Università degli Studi di Pavia

SUMMARY

The aim of the book is to give a thorough account of the emergence of dummy
auxiliaries in several situations of first (L1) and second (L2) language
acquisition. This term has been chosen among several other almost-synonyms,
such as 'light verbs', 'dummies', 'fillers', etc., and describes a
construction in which the speakers spontaneously produce a semantically empty
auxiliary, as in 'she does want eyes on her back' (p. 171). This construction
is acceptable in standard English, only if the auxiliary has an emphatic or
contrastive stress. However, both L1 and L2 learners resort to dummy
auxiliaries far beyond such restrictions, and without treating the
construction as a pragmatically or semantically marked alternative.

Part I focuses on monolingual L1 aquisition, and contains studies on native
speakers of English (Schütze, Ch. 1), Dutch (Zukerman, Ch. 2; Hollebrandse,
van Koert, A. van Hout, Ch. 3; Julien, van de Craats, van Hout, Ch. 4), and
Cypriot Greek (Grohman and Leivada, Ch. 5).
 
Chapter 1 approaches dummy auxiliaries in the framework of Generative Grammar.
Schütze observes that English children differ from adults with respect to the
derivation called 'Tense to Verb (T-to-V) lowering'. This is obligatory, in
Standard English, in all the cases where it is not blocked by elements such as
negation or 'positive emphatic polarity'; however, it appears to be optional
in child varieties, as a result of difficulties in the comparision with V-to-T
raising. Dummy 'do' in child speech is considered by the author as an
allomorph of a 0-morpheme occurring as a functional head of a Mood phrase.
This feature is lost in adult speech due to an economy principle; T-to-V
lowering becomes obligatory because ''the derivation using fewer overt
morphemes bolcks the one using more morphemes'' (p. 28).

In Chapter 2, Zuckerman addresses Dutch dummy constructions with auxiliary
'doen' (''do'') and 'gaan' (''to go''). The author adopts a framework which
combines a structure-based approach and an input-based approach. The first
approach is grounded on the observation that dummy auxiliaries are used in V2
Dutch matrix clauses (i.e., clauses with a rigid word order, where the
inflected verb always occupies the second position), but are absent in
embedded verb-final clauses, and their use is thus related to the acquisition
of V2; as no movement is involved in embedded clauses, the dummy construction
is not motivated. The second approach draws on the hypothesis that children at
pre-scholar age overextend ‘gaan’ + INF constructions present in adult
speakers' input language. After summarising two past experiments (Zuckerman
2001), the author provides further evidence for his theory that dummy
auxiliaries are both structure dependent and input-dependent, especially with
respect to dialect variation.

Chapter 3 describes an experimental study with five-year-old Dutch children
aimed at tense elicitation. Despite the relatively late age of the test
subjects, who, according to other studies, should have already acquired the
inflected V2 syntactic structure, the experiment provides good evidence that
children at this age still produce constructions with 'gaan' as a dummy
auxiliary. According to the authors, this construction is economical from
different points of view: from a morphosyntactic point of view, (i) dummy
constructions are ''easy to learn and quick to retrieve in processing'' (p.
93); (ii) they avoid inflection of the lexical verb; (iii) they provide a
one-to-one correspondence between form and function, in that grammatical
information, such as tense, is indexed on the auxiliary, while lexical
information is indexed on the lexical verb. Moreover, such constructions
perform an effect of existential closure over the event described by the
lexical verb. Finally, the authors argue that this construction is left out in
Standard Dutch because the synthetic form allows finer aspectual distinctions.

In Chapter 4, the authors provide evidence for the use of Dutch 'zijn'
(''be'') as a dummy auxiliary. This construction, unlike the ones presented in
the preceding chapters, is absent in the input, and represents an invention of
L1 learners. Julien, van de Craats and van Hout present the results of a
longitudinal study with five children from ages 1;6 to 3;6. The main outcome
is the definition of three stages in the acquisition of finiteness: at stage
1, young speakers only display root infinitives in sentence-final position; at
stage 2, they start to use finite, non-thematic verbs such as 'zijn' and
'gaan' in V1/V2 position; finally, at stage 3, more finite verbs are used in
V2 position, and at the same time, dummy constructions start to show up. This
demonstrates the crucial role of dummy auxiliaries in the acquisition of
finiteness.

Chapter 5 contains a groundbreaking contribution, in that it represents the
first study on light verbs in Cypriot Greek. The article focuses on the use of
'kamno' (''do''), 'ðio' (''give'') and 'pçano' (''take'') as dummy verbs in an
elicitation task with a random sample of 100 children divided into five
age-brackets and ranging in age from 4;0 to 8;11 years old. Using the five
types of light verbs described in Kearns (1988) as a point of departure, the
study shows that ''true'' light-verb constructions are found in the sample,
and with higher frequency in Cypriot Greek when compared to Standard Modern
Greek. Furthermore, the speakers appear to prime unexisting light verb
constructions.

Part II is dedicated to child bilingualism, and contains a total of three
studies on the following topics: L2 English (Bohnacker, Ch. 6), L2 German
(Chilla, Haberzettl and Wulff, Ch. 7), and Turkish-German learners affected
with specific language impairment (SLI) (de Jong, Blom, Orgassa, Ch. 8).

In Chapter 6, Bohnacker discusses data from her past work (Bohnacker 1999a,b)
in light of new findings on dummy auxiliaries. She presents data from a
longitudinal study on an Icelandic-English bilingual child living in England
and exposed to both input languages. The author documents two steps in the
acquisition of 'do' as an auxiliary: the child learns at 2;0 how to use it in
negative sentences, and at 3;0 she acquires interrogative and emphatic
affirmative sentences. At the same time, she starts to overextend the use of
'do' to non-emphatic affirmative sentences. This is interpreted by the author
as an attempt by the bilingual child to regularise the Standard English system
through the ''creation'' of an unstressed 'do' in complementary distribution
with the other two.

Chapter 7 compares the acquisition of German as an L1 and L2 with respect to
the use of dummy verbs such as 'sein' (''be''), and 'machen' (''do/make'').
The data for monolingual acquisition come from an extract of Szagun’s (2006)
German corpus, while the L2 data come from two groups of children with Turkish
as their L1, which are part of the Hamburg corpus (Rothweiler 2006) and the
Augsburg corpus (Haberzettl 2005; Wegener 1992). The first group has an age
onset of 3-4 and the second one is formed by two young girls with an age onset
of 6. The most relevant outcomes of the study are that the age onset is
crucial in the emergence of dummy auxiliaries; while dummy verbs appear to be
extremely rare in L1 acquisition and in the first group of L2 learners (age
onset 3), older learners frequently use this construction as a link to V2 word
order. In this case, the dummy auxiliary has the function of creating ''a
mould'' (p. 237) for the production of German verbal brackets.

Chapter 8 is quite different from the others in that it contains an
experimental study about dummy verbs in monolingual and bilingual children
affected by SLI. The aim of the experiment is twofold: on one hand, it is
meant to explore the differences in the use of dummy auxiliaries in mono- and
bilinguals; on the other hand, it aims to observe differences in SLI speakers
compared to speakers typical development (TD). The results show that the
presence of SLI is clearly related to a higher frequency of dummy
constructions, while the effects of bilingualism appear to be less pervasive.
In the authors' view, dummy auxiliary constructions represent a less costly
alternative in terms of processing for SLI speakers.

Part III focuses on adult learner varieties, and contains two studies: one on
Morocccan learners of Dutch (Verhagen, Ch. 9), and one on Turkish learners of
French and German (Schimke, Ch. 10).

Chapter 9 contains two studies. The first one is focused on the uses of the
dummy 'is' construction by Moroccan learners of Dutch. It provides evidence
that the dummy construction occurs at a stage where learners have not yet
acquired the rules for subject-verb agreement and verb raising. The second
study focuses on possible uses of 'is' as a marker of aspect. Results show
that dummy 'is' is associated by the speakers with the present tense and
ongoing actions. Verhagen strongly argues that 'is' is incompatible with the
perfective aspect (contra Starren 2001) and that perhaps it could be related
to the marking of durative aspect.

In Chapter 10, Schimke analyses the use of dummy verb constructions in the
interlanguage of two groups of Turkish learners: one learning German and one
learning French. First, the author shows that dummy verb constructions are
spotted in both groups, but with an higher frequency in the French group.
Secondly, she takes into account a possible relation with the acquisition of
verb raising; dummy verbs are characteristic of ''an intermediate stage in the
acquisition of verb raising in L2 German'' (p. 328), while no evidence for
this correlation is found in the French data. These data are then compared
with analogous studies on L2 Dutch. Schimke observes that, despite both being
V2 languages, German and Dutch differ in several aspects: the latter is much
more similar to French, in that dummy verbs are more frequent and more clearly
related with the acquisition of finiteness; however, this construction appears
to be associated with the acquisition of verb raising only in German and
Dutch, but not in French.

The contributions in Part IV try to find generalisations on dummy auxiliaries,
addressing the issue from different perspectives. This phenomenon is
investigated by Jordens (Ch. 11) from a semantic-pragmatic point of view,
followed by a comparison of learner varieties with monolingual adult varieties
(Ch. 12- Cornips) and with Dutch dialects (Ch. 13- Barbiers).

In Chapter 11, Jorden discusses the results of a qualitative study conducted
on both L1 and L2  learners of Dutch. First, he distinguishes between 'dummy
auxiliary', that is, a verbal element used by speakers ''instead of a regular
auxiliary verb form'' (p. 341), and full-fledged auxiliaries, which are
''elements of a functional category system'' (p. 341). In Jorden's view, the
study demonstrates that at a first stage in the aquisition of Dutch, dummies
are lexical elements which reflect a distinction,in the speakers' system
between agentive and non-agentive utterances. Dummies at this stage simply
mark the control of an agent on the action and occupy the same structural
position of modal verbs. Only at a second stage, which he calls the
'functional stage', verbs such as 'gaat', 'komt', 'doet', etc., become the
head of a functional projection, which corresponds with the acquisition of the
auxiliary position. Learners may then use auxiliaries in order to avoid verb
movement, only in this case, the term 'dummy auxiliary' is correct.

Chapter 12 challenges interpretations of dummy auxiliaries in Dutch as being
exclusively related to the acquisition of V2. Cornips compares the production
of dummies in various oral corpora, providing evidence that if spoken language
is taken into account, adult Dutch constructions such as 'gaan' + INF and
'doen'+INF have a wider range of meanings than what is normally codified in
Dutch grammars, especially concerning the expression of tense and aspect. This
allows the author to opt for a partially input-based approach. Even though she
does not deny the relation of such constructions with the acquisition of V2
position, she suggests that the features characterising the speech of L1 and
L2 learners could as well mirror some features of the input language.

In Chapter 13, Barbiers provides an account of dummy auxiliary constructions
with 'doen', 'habben', 'zijn', and 'gaan' in Dutch dialects. The author
exhaustively reviews dummy constructions in dialects of Standard Dutch and
learner varieties, showing that such constructions have a distinct syntactic
status in the former. Barbiers then claims that interpretations based on an
economy principle, where the dummy construction is seen as a device to reduce
the complexity involved in verb movement, are in and of themselves
problematic: ''a Principles and Parameters approach would predict a general
preference for dummy auxiliaries, while Minimalist approaches would predict a
free alternation between dummy auxiliaries and movement constructions'' (p.
413).

EVALUATION

This volume is highly valuable in several respects. First, it goes very deep
into the exploration of a single phenomenon which is analysable from a wide
range of different perspectives. Not only does it contribute to theories of
language acquisition, in general, and second language acquisition, in
particular, but it also includes other perspectives such as contact
linguistics and general linguistics.

All the thirteen studies are easily readable, even by non-specialists of
language acquisition, and this is mostly due to the particular care that all
of the authors take in forming clear discussions of the frameworks adopted in
their studies. Furthermore, in the discussion of experimental studies, the
authors are very scrupulous in the description of the aims and methodologies
of data elicitation, and also, when needed, they supplement ideas with helpful
pictures and summary tables. On the other hand, however, the high specificity
of the topic makes this volume mostly usable by students and researchers at
all levels who have done previous work on language acquisition, or who are at
least acquainted with the aims and methodologies of the discipline. Potential
readers are also those researchers who work on the morphosyntax of auxiliaries
outside of the perspective of acquisition.

Perhaps, since many of the authors hold a personal, preferential view on dummy
auxiliaries, and the notion itself is discussed rather than taken for granted,
it could have been worth adding a final chapter at the end of the book in
which the outcomes of the thirteen studies are compared and discussed. This
would have been quite helpful to the reader, in order to provide a new and
up-to-date ''status quaestionis'' on several interesting aspects such as the
notion of economy and the role played by input.

REFERENCES

Kearns, Kate. 1988. ''Light verbs in English''. Ms. MIT.

Rothweiler, Monika. 2006. ''The acquisition of V2 and subordinate clauses in
early successive acquisition of German''. In: Conxita Lleó (ed.) ''Interfaces
in multilingualism: Acquisition, representation and processing''. Amstedam,
Benjamins: 91-113.

Starren, Marianne 2001. The second time: the acquisition of temporality in
Dutch and French as a second language. Ph.D. dissertation, Tilburg University.

Szagun, Gisela. 2006. ''Sprachentwicklung beim Kind'' [Child language
development]. Weinheim, Beltz.

Zuckerman, Shalom 2001. The acquisition of ''optional'' movement. Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Groningen.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Eugenio Goria is a PhD student at Pavia University, Italy. His main interest
is contact linguistics, and at present he is working on English-Spanish
codeswitching in Gibraltar. Among his other interests are Latin linguistics
and information structure.








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