Rappel : conf. Ayoun

[Bridget Copley]

Le programme "Temporalité: Typologie et Acquisition" (temptypac) de la
Fédération "Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques" du CNRS a le  
plaisir
d'annoncer un exposé:

« Tense-aspect-modality : bridging the gap between theory and SLA  
empirical research »

Dalila Ayoun (University of Arizona)

Date : lundi 12 octobre 2009
Lieu : CNRS Pouchet salle 159 (métro Guy Môquet/Brochant ou RER Porte  
de Clichy)
Heure: 14h30-16h30

The investigation of the acquisition of temporal systems by L2  
learners has been
the focus of much empirical research particularly since the  
formulation of the Aspect
Hypothesis by Andersen (1986, 1991) for two main reasons: 1) TAM  
systems involve all
aspects of a language – pragmatic, lexical, syntactic, morphological  
– as well as the
mapping from one aspect to the other (e.g., Ayoun & Salaberry 2005;  
Salaberry 2008); 2)
TAM systems allow us to test the latest theoretical minimalist  
assumptions as well as the
current L2 acquisition hypotheses such as the Representational Deficit  
Hypothesis
(Hawkins 2001) and the Failed Features Hypothesis (Hawkins & Chan  
1997; Hawkins &
Liszka 2003) versus the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost  
& White 2000).
Testing these hypotheses is important because it will ultimately help  
us in addressing the
debate between emergentism (O’Grady 2008) and nativism (e.g., Goad &  
White 2008;
Hawkins 2008). However, we must carefully navigate the growing divide  
between
current and rapidly evolving minimalist assumptions and its  
implications for L2
acquisition working hypotheses.

Following the suggestion that syntactic parameters may involve only  
functional
categoriestegories leading to the functional parameterization  
hypothesis (Borer 1984; Chomsky
1989; Fukui 1986, 1988; Ouhalla 1991a), research in L1 and L2  
acquisition in the 1990s
was concerned with the phrase structure that child and adult learners  
may start with and
how it may develop. Thus for instance Radford (1990, 1995) proposed  
that children’s
initial clauses are just lexical VPs, without functional architecture,  
and thus without IP
and CP projections. However, the initial small number of functional  
categories such as
CP, IP or DP greatly expanded. For instance, Cinque (1999) extended  
Pollock’s (1989)
split-INFL to an exploded functional structure above VP whereby each  
of the verb’s
inflectional features (subcategories of tense, mood, modality, aspect,  
voice, etc) is
associated with a distinct functional head, itself projecting a full  
phrase and the resulting
inflectional hierarchy has further evolved (Cinque 2006) to the point  
that we need to ask
what it means to refer to the acquisition of functional categories.  
Lardiere (2009)
proposes that the question needs to be addressed in terms of more  
specialized feature
matrices and suggests that the task of the L2 learner consists in  
reassembling features.
This talk will consider whether this is the right approach given the  
most recent minimalist
assumptions and learnability issues related to the L2 acquisition of  
TAM systems.

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