29.4099, Diss: English; Psycholinguistics: Stamatia Michalopoulou: ''The Null Subject in the Interlanguage: The case of Greek students of German as a Third Language''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-4099. Mon Oct 22 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.4099, Diss: English; Psycholinguistics: Stamatia Michalopoulou: ''The Null Subject in the Interlanguage: The case of Greek students of German as a Third Language''

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Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:47:30
From: Stamatia Michalopoulou [stamatia.michalopoulou at gmail.com]
Subject: The Null Subject in the Interlanguage: The case of Greek students of German as a Third Language

 
Institution: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2015 

Author: Stamatia Michalopoulou

Dissertation Title: The Null Subject in the Interlanguage: The case of Greek
students of German as a Third Language 

Dissertation URL:  http://ikee.lib.auth.gr/record/283552/?ln=el

Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Athina Sioupi
Melita Staurou-Sifaki
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli

Dissertation Abstract:

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the interlanguage of people
with Greek as mother tongue (L1), whose first foreign language is English
(L2), when acquiring German as a second foreign language (L3). 

 The dominant topic of discussion of the theoretical and experimental
approaches on the L3 Acquisition determines the source of linguistic transfer
of syntactic structures and functional categories in the interlanguage of
non-native speakers (NNS) in the L3 Acquisition. Since the NNS already know
two languages, the source of linguistic transfer cannot be determined unless
the studied syntactic phenomenon and parameter are differently valued at L1
and L2 and L3 is similar to or different with one of the two.

In this case we investigated the Null Subject Parameter, a parameter in which
Greek and English have different values. Greek is a Null Subject Language and
English is Non Null Subject Language. This, among other properties on the
surface structure of language, means that in Greek a pronoun does not
necessarily have to be realized in subject position, overt grammatical
subjects may be omitted, (eg both ego pezo and Ø pezo are correct), while in
English the pronominal subject must always be explicitly implemented in order
to constitute a grammatically correct sentence (eg I play but not * Ø play).
German is classified by many researchers as a Non Null Subject Language
because in most cases German does not allow the omission of the overt
grammatical subject (eg ich spiele but not * Ø spiele). In fact, also in
German there are some instances, where omission of the overt grammatical
subject is permitted, therefore current theoretical approaches classify German
among Expletive Null Subject Languages. The cases where the overt grammatical
subject can be omitted also in the German language are identified in the
Passive Voice of specific verb classes. 

Therefore, it is obvious that the Null Subject Parameter in German is realized
in some cases, as in English and in others as in Greek. For this reason, this
parameter was chosen to be studied.

In order to investigate the interlanguage of NNS an experimental study,
consisting of two tasks, a Grammaticality Judgement Task and a Preference
Task, was conducted. These tasks have measured the judgments and preferences
respectively of three groups of participants. Two groups consisted of NNS with
different level proficiency in German, but the same in English and the third
group consisted of native speakers of German and served as control group.
 

 The results of both experimental tasks show that none of the languages the
NNS already known seem to play a more significant role than the other in
shaping their interlanguage in both proficiency levels in German. Both
languages seem to be equally important and available in order to provide an
appropriate linguistic representation of the target - language at any given
time. 
 

 According to this data it seems that the model, which best describes the
interlanguage of the NNS is that of Flynn, Foley & Vinnitskaya (2004), namely,
the Cumulative-Enhancement Model for Language Acquisition. According to this
model it can be either only ''positive language transfer'' or no linguistic
transfer at all of the languages already acquired by the NNS in their target
L3.




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