Syntactic development in PT Previously, I have discussed the original version of PT which consider morphological and syntactic development within the

same schedule. For syntactic development, the extension of the theory proposed by Pienemann, Di Biase and Kawaguchi (2005) assumes that learners begin with the least marked forms and proceed towards the more marked structures. Included among the PT hypothesis pertaining to learners’ syntactic development we find the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis, the Topic Hypothesis and the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis. However, more recently, Bettoni and Di Biase (2015), propose to drop the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis and Topic Hypothesis replacing them with a single Prominence Hypothesis and proposing only some minor adjustment for the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis. The Prominence Hypothesis (Bettoni & Di Biase, 2015, p. 63) states that;

6. In second language acquisition learners will initially not differentiate between grammatical functions (GFs) and discourse functions (DFs), for example, between SUBJ and TOP. Differentiation begins when an element such as an XP, or other lexical material, is added to the canonical string in a position of prominence in c-structure, that is, the first in the sentence. This element may be TOP in declaratives or FOC in interrogatives leaving, crucially, the canonical string unaltered. At the next stage, learners will be able to construct non-canonical strings assigning prominence to any constituent in an unequivocal way.

Learners’ syntactic development based on the Prominence Hypothesis is illustrated in Table 3.6.

Table 3.6

PT: Syntactic development based on the Prominence Hypothesis (after Bettoni & Di Biase 2015; Kawaguchi 2015)

Stage Structures Examples

Non-canonical word order TOPXP marked orders

FOCXP marked order

Ice cream she likes

XPDF Canonical word order TOPXP SVO/SOV

FOCWH SVO/SOV

Tomorrow they go home

Canonical word order SVO/SOV Mary jumped

He working

Lemma Access Single words

Formulas

station, here My name is Pim

Generally, the Prominence hypothesis, which accounts for c-structure to f- structure mapping, predicts that learners begin with canonical word order and then gradually proceed to use a more marked word orders. The development of the learner’s mapping of thematic roles on grammatical functions (that is a-structure to f-structure mapping), is accounted for by the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis, originally proposed by Pienemann, Di Biase and Kawaguchi (2005), attemps to trace the learner’s syntactic progress “beyond the rigidity of canonicity towards a fuller flexibility of the optional choices allowed by their L2 in assigning GFs to thematic roles” (Bettoni & Di Biase, 2015, p. 68) . Lexical Mapping Hypothesis is now expanded to include further syntactic choices triggered by the speaker’s discourse or semantic

requirements. Bettoni and Di Biase (2015, p.68) formulate the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis as follows;

7. Second language acquirers will initially map the highest available role in the thematic hierarchy (e.g., agent, experiencer) onto minimally specified SUBJ/TOP. We call this default mapping. Next, they learn to add further arguments mapped onto grammatical functions (GFs) differentiating them from SUBJ (and OBJ, if present). They may also learn some exceptional verbs at this second stage. Finally, they learn to impose their own perspective on events, that is, to direct the listener’s attention to a particular thematic role lower in the hierarchy by promoting it to SUBJ, and defocus the highest role by mapping it onto a GF other than SUBJ, or suppress it altogether. At this last stage learners may add further role information regarding causality, benefit, or adversity. They may also add to their lexicon particular subsets of Vs, such as unaccusatives, as well as further intrinsically exceptional Vs requiring their own mapping schema. We call this non-default mapping.

Learners’ syntactic development based on the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis is summarised in Table 3.7.

Table 3.7

PT: Syntactic development based on the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (after Bettoni & Di Biase 2015; Kawaguchi 2015)

Stage Constructions Examples

Non-default mapping Unaccusatives, passives, causatives, exceptional verbs constructions etc.

Bob was beaten by Ted She made him cry

Default Mapping and

additional arguments Agent/experiencer mapped on SUBJ, patient/theme mapped on OBJ, and other members of the a- structure hierarchy such as goals and locatives, mapped on OBL

Mary put the butter in fridge She gives John a new bike

Default mapping Agent/experiencer mapped on SUBJ and Patient/theme mapped on OBJ

John sleeping John fry egg

Lemma access Single words

For the syntactic development, I hypothesise the linguistic outcomes of each structure in Malay based on the Prominence and Lexical Mapping Hypothesis. The structure for English syntax are already outlined in Table 3.6 and 3.7. Table 3.8 and 3.9 summarises the structures for Malay:

Table 3.8

PT: Syntactic development in Malay based on the Prominence Hypothesis (after Bettoni & Di Biase 2015; Kawaguchi 2015)

Stage Structures Examples

Non-canonical word order TOPXP marked orders Yang kejar kucing itu adalah anjing

REL chase cat that is dog

‘The one that chases the cat is the dog’ XPDF Canonical word order TOPXP SVO/SOV Anjing, ia kejar kucing

Dog, it chase cat

‘The dog, it chases the cat’

Canonical word order SVO anjing kejar kucing

dog chase cat

‘the dog chases the cat’

Lemma Access Single words

Formulas

kucing ‘cat’, anjing ‘dog’ Apa khabar? ‘How are you?’ Table 3.9

PT: Syntactic development in Malay based on the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (after Bettoni & Di Biase 2015; Kawaguchi 2015)

Stage Constructions Examples

Non-default mapping Unaccusatives, passives, causatives, exceptional verbs constructions etc.

kucing kena kejar anjing di kawasan itu

cat KENA (PASS) chase dog at place that

‘the cat is chased by the dog at that place’

Default Mapping and

additional arguments Agent/experiencer mapped on SUBJ, patient/theme mapped on OBJ, and other members of the a- structure hierarchy such as goals and locatives, mapped on OBL

Ali bagi Abu basikal baru

Ali give Abu bike new ‘Ali gives Abu a new bike’

Default mapping Agent/experiencer mapped on SUBJ and Patient/theme mapped on OBJ

Anjing kejar kucing dog chase cat

‘the dog chases the cat’

Lemma access Single words

Empirical evidence supporting the Prominence Hypothesis is reported in several studies such as Bettoni and Di Biase (2011) for Italian, Di Biase, Kawaguchi & Yamaguchi (2015) for English, and Kawaguchi (2015) for Japanese. Results in Zhang (2007) and Itani-Adams (2009) support the earlier Topic Hypothesis for Chinese and for bilingual first language English-Japanese respectively. While for Lexical Mapping Hypothesis, studies supporting it include those by Bettoni, Di Biase and Nuzzo (2009) for Italian L2, Kawaguchi’s investigation of Japanese L2 (2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2015), Keating and Kessler (2009) as well as Wang (2009) for English L2. In this thesis, apart from investigating the child’s plural acquisition, the analyses also include the child’s lexical development in Malay and English. Thus, these new PT hypotheses are tested for the first time in Malay-English bilingual development. In turn, this will provide a context for focusing on the development of plural marking in both languages.

3.9 Conclusion

This chapter outlined the background information pertaining to the study of a bilingual child language development in Malay and English. BFLA is a relatively new field in language acquisition, and it is still in its infancy. Research on the Malay- English constellation in BFLA is non-existent at the moment. Thus, this study contributes to the diversification of language pairs in the field of childhood bilingualism.

With regard to plural acquisition, studies investigating specific plural development in bilingual children is limited. The sequence of plural acquisition in children acquiring two languages is not robust, so the findings in this thesis will shed some light on the sequence of plural development in bilingual children.

This current study also opts to use Processability Theory (PT) as a framework to analyse the morphological and syntactic development of Malay and English of the bilingual child. There is only one other study investigating BFLA with PT, i.e., Itani- Adams’ research on a Japanese-English bilingual child (2013). Being the first of its kind for Malay-English, this study also develops PT-based developmental hypotheses for the development of morphology and syntax in Malay early language acquisition, which is also applicable to Malay as a second language, given the original nature of PT. The longitudinal investigation conducted in this study also allows these hypotheses to be tested for Malay from the PT perspective. In the next chapter, the research questions of this thesis and the detailed methodology of the study are outlined.

CHAPTER 4