The Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis

The mapping processes found in WH-questions and passives illustrate the speaker‘s choice of using non-linear relationships between a-structure, f-structure and c-structure. As shown in the previous section, this mapping process is subject to the constraints specified in LFG‘s correspondence mechanisms. Putting it boldly, adult speakers of English do not always simply map a linear list of argument roles onto a list of grammatical functions and map those onto continous c-structures as shown in (39).

(39) agent patient ... argument roles  

SUBJECT OBJECT ... grammatical functions  

NPSUBJ NPOBJ ... c-structure

However, this is exactly what children aged 4 acquiring English as their first language have been found to do in psycholinguistic experiments. For instance, Bever (1970) studied the accuracy with which informants act out test sentences such as (40a-e).

(40) a The horse kisses the cow.

b It‘s the horse that kisses the cow. c It‘s the cow the horse kisses. d The cow is kissed by the horse. e The dog pats the mother.

Bever found that four-year old children tend to assign the agent role to the first noun in a sentence, even in sentences like (40c) and (40d). Strohner and Nelson (1974) confirmed these findings and also included factors such as ‗event likelihood‘ in their analysis, which explains why Bever‘s strategy (―first noun = agent‖) is unlikely to be applied in (40e). In other words, the children used English canonical order to interpret the events: i.e. the first linear participant was mapped onto subject function and assigned the agentive role – with the exception of (40e), which contradicted children‘s world knowledge (―event likelihood‖). Naturally, neither Bever nor Strohner and Nelson had the benefit of conceptualising these findings in terms of LFG. Instead, they

viewed their findings in terms of fixed and direct relationships between semantics and surface grammatical form.

Bloom (1994) reports that knowledge of word order appears to exist even before the two-word stage. A study with 17-month old babies showed that they were sensitive to semantic contrasts expressed by word order (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Fletcher, DeGaspe Beaubien and Cauley, 1985). Newport and Meier (1985) show that children acquiring American Sign Language, a free word order language, nevertheless initially use word order to express grammatical relations.

Canonical schemata are also present in adult language processing. Weyerts, Penke, Münte, Heinze and Clahsen (2002) present strong evidence from online studies supporting the view that for a configurational language (German) the processor can handle sequences more readily when the subject precedes the object, rather than the other way around, although both sequences do occur in German. The evidence is based on self-paced reading experiments and studies of event-related brain potentials. All studies show a clear subject-first preference and an added processing cost associated with SOV. This research is in line with previous studies by Bates and MacWhinney (e.g. Bates and MacWhinney, 1981; 1982; 1987), showing that speakers of English (an SVO language) tend to interpret preverbal NPs as grammatical subjects.

In second language acquisition, reliance on canonical word order is even more pronounced than in L1 acquisition, particularly in language production. It is a well- attested finding, from a large number of corpus-based studies in most languages that have been studied (including Germanic languages, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic – for further reference compare the chapters of this volume on the above L2s), that the initial hypothesis of syntax is based on canonical word order.

Sasaki (1998) demonstrated in online comprehension studies of L2 processing that the canonical sentence schema is easier to process than non-canonical schemata both for native and non-native speakers. Sasaki demonstrated longer latency and lower accuracy rates in the comprehension of Japanese causative sentences than in canonical (active) double object sentence (see also Kawaguchi, this volume). He attributed these results to the higher processing cost for sentences requiring non-canonical mapping.

Pinker (1984) reports that in his own re-analysis of Brown‘s (1973) English L1 data (Eve, Adam and Sara), he found only a handful of verbal passives compared to thousands of active sentences. This corresponds to findings from Bever‘s (1970) and

from de Villiers and de Villiers‘ (1973) study of L1 learners‘ comprehension of passive sentences, which show that passives cannot be processed reliably before age five or six. These findings parallel Slobin‘s27

(1984) observation that Japanese verbs such as morau

(―receive‖), whose recipient argument maps onto the subject (and takes nominative case), are acquired late by Japanese children. In experiments, Marantz (1982) found that three and four-year-old children could easily learn made-up verbs whose agent and patient arguments were expressed as subjects and objects respectively. The same informants had difficulties, however, learning verbs with the opposite correspondences. All of the above studies are compatible with direct canonical mapping. As mentioned above, the notion of direct mapping goes back a long way (e.g. Bever, 1970; Slobin, 1985; Pinker, 1984, 1989). Direct mapping has been discussed in the context of functional as well as rationalist language acquisition research. As Pinker (1984) points out, many linguists have noted a regular relationship between thematic roles and grammatical functions (e.g. Bresnan, 1982; Jackendoff, 1977; Keenan, 1976; Keenan and Comrie, 1977; Perlmutter, 1980;). Pinker (1984, 297 ff.) characterises this relationship as follows:

―In a language‘s ‗basic forms‘ (roughly, simple, active, affirmative, declarative, minimally presuppositional, and pragmatically neutral sentences; see Keenan 1976), agents (if present) are realised as subjects, themes are realised as subjects if there is no agent and as objects otherwise, and sources, locations, and goals are realised as oblique objects if there is an agent or a theme or both, or as objects if there is only a theme.‖

According to Pinker (1984), canonical mapping occurs when the lexical entry of the verb specifies thematic roles for its arguments that are associated with their grammatical function, without crossing the links between the two tiers in Figure 6. Also, there must be exactly one thematic role linked to SUBJ (not necessarily the ‗agent‘).

27

Slobin‘s (1985) explanatory approach to direct mapping is data-driven. Slobin collected and analysed large amounts of L1 acquisition data across different languages and found that the majority of his data on early L1 learner language can be accounted for by a ―prototypical scene,‖ which is a highly transitive activity that is mapped onto canonical sentence schemata. In this process the agent-role is linked to SUBJ, and the patient-role linked to OBJ. Slobin claims that the child‘s association of the prototypical scene with the canonical sentence schema is driven by the frequency and saliency of the linguistic input.

SUBJ OBJ OBLIQUE (grammatical functions)

| | |

agent theme/patient goal/source/location (thematic relations)

Figure 6: Canonical mapping following Pinker (1984: 298-307)

However, as Pinker (1984) points out, there are also non-basic verb forms, such as passives, and exceptional (intrinsically non-canonical) verbs such as receive, please, which do not conform to a canonical association between argument structure and grammatical functions. Pinker (307) proposes that canonical mapping is available as an acquisition mechanism and that it requires less knowledge (phrase structure rules and inflectional rules) and less processing of the input (i.e. parsing the string and observing the roles played by the NP referents) than learning non-canonical associations from positive evidence.

Pinker‘s hypotheses are reminiscent of aspects of LMT, although LMT was created much later than Pinker‘s hypotheses. In fact, Pinker‘s work is based on the early version of LFG (Kaplan and Bresnan, 1982) and is therefore compatible with our overall approach. The mapping processes proposed by Pinker that are sketched out above in Figure 6, however, focused on cases of canonical mapping and offer no formal LFG account of other cases and their variations across languages, or of the development from the initial hypothesis to the mapping processes found in the target language. This was due to the fact that at the time LFG did not contain any general formalism to represent correspondences between argument structure and functional structure across languages. These correspondences can now be represented by LFG‘s Lexical Mapping Theory. In addition, the correspondence between c-structure and f-structure can be accounted for by the principles outlined in Section 3.2. above.

Lee (2001) treats these correspondence relationships within an OT-LFG framework and on this basis develops a Universal Scale of unmarked mapping such as the following:

―GF: SUBJ > NonSUBJ Case: NOM > OBL

In other words, Lee‘s scale implies that the grammatical function SUBJect is less marked than Non-SUBJects, NOMinative case is less marked than OBLique case, and that the initial position is less marked than the noninitial position. This approach permits a generic treatment of mapping principles starting from a universal default and covering the full range of typologically possible variations found in interlanguages and target languages.

We can therefore modify the ‗direct mapping hypothesis‘ on the basis of LMT and c-to- f-structure correspondences as in (41).

(41) The Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis28

In second language acquisition learners will initially organise syntax by mapping the most prominent semantic role available onto the subject (i.e. the most prominent grammatical role). The structural expression of the subject, in turn, will occupy the most prominent linear position in c-structure, namely the initial position.

In other words, the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis predicts that learners will initially organise syntax on the basis of one-to-one correspondences between a-structure and f- structure and between c-structure and f-structure. As we showed above, such one-to-one correspondences will universally result in entirely linear structures that require no internal re-arrangement of linguistic material and no language-specific processors or memory stores. Given this state of L2 linguistic knowledge, the yet immature L2 processor cannot transfer linguistic information, as would be required for the unification of lexical features. These one-to-one correspondences, which are illustrated in Figure 7, therefore guarantee the computationally least costly manner of organising L2 syntax and rely entirely on aspects of the syntactic machinery that are not language-specific, including f-structure, the thematic hierarchy and universal aspects of c-structure.

28

The term ‗Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis‘ is inspired by OT-LFG research (e.g. Bresnan, 2000; Sells, 1999, 2001; Lee, 2001). This connection between PT and OT-LFG has been pointed out to us by Peter Sells.

Figure 7: one-to-one correspondences

The reader will recall from Section 1 of this chapter that theories of language acquisition have to address two key issues: (i) the logical problem (i.e. the origin of linguistic knowledge), and (ii) the reason(s) for universal patterns in developmental trajectories (i.e. the developmental problem). Both Pinker (1984) and Slobin (1982) tackled both these issues simultaneously in their approaches. In other words, both authors see their approaches as a contribution to explaining the learning mechanisms as well as the developmental schedules involved in language acquisition.

In contrast, PT was designed as a set of psycholinguistic constraints on what learners can process. This set of constraints that was formalised in the processabilty hierarchy serves as an explanation of developmental trajectories. In other words, PT does not contain learning mechanisms. It nevertheless interfaces with LFG, i.e. a theory that can model linguistic knowledge, and PT can therefore be extended to also address the logical problem. The OT-LFG interface offers a powerful epistemological approach that can complement the set of developmental constraints inherent in PT. In the extension of PT that is presented here we have not yet completed this step.

The need for such a complementary relationship of developmental constraints and empistemology is evident in the initial hypothesis of language learners. Pienemann (1998b) discusses the differential initial hypotheses found in German L1 and L2

learners. He shows (following Clahsen, 1990) that in L1 learners the initial word order hypothesis is SOV, whereas in L2 learners it is SVO, and that nevertheless both hypotheses are within the constraints defined by the processability hierarchy. In fact, both word order patterns are canonical. It turns out that this initial hypothesis then sets in motion differential developmental trajectories, both of which are in line with the constraints defined by PT, and that the L1 trajectory is less error-ridden and more successful.29 In other words, PT does capture essential aspects of these differential developmental dynamics. It is not set up, however, to determine why L1 and L2 learners start out with different initial word orders. This is an issue that can only be resolved by an epistemological approach, such as the one present in the OT-LFG interface (cf. Sells, 2001).

The Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis implies that L2 learners know the basic architecture of syntax with its three parallel levels of structure. In other words, it implies that L1 knowledge is transferred at an abstract level. This assumption does not in any way contradict the ―developmentally moderated transfer hypothesis‖ (cf. Pienemann, Di Biase, Kawaguchi and Håkansson, this volume), because the latter relates exclusively to language-specific features of grammar, not to its overall design.

Given that many aspects of c-structure are language-specific and the learner can transfer only universal aspects of c-structure to the L2, the ‗developmentally moderated transfer hypothesis‘ predicts that at the initial state c-structure is ‗flat‘ (e.g. without VP), and the S-procedure as well as phrasal procedures are unable to act as linguistic memory stores for grammatical information because such information is language-specific. For instance, as we showed in Pienemann, Di Biase, Kawaguchi and Håkansson (this volume), the entries to the L2 lexicon have not been annotated for any syntactic features. Also, we noted above that c-structure rules and related principles that ensure positional constraints, such as the auxiliary in second position in English WH-questions, are highly language-specific and can therefore not be transferred to the L2.

In the original version of PT the initial hypothesis of syntax was described as a state in which no information can be transferred from anywhere in the sentence to any other position in the sentence using lexical unification. The reason for this is that at this point of the developmental process no procedures have been developed that would allow the information transfer to be carried out. Kempen (1998) raised the question of how the

29

Some aspects of these developmental dynamics can be modelled by the notion of ―generative entrenchment‖ (Wimsatt, 1986), as shown by Pienemann (1998a).

learner can form sentences at this point if the S-procedure has not been developed. Pienemann (1998b) assumes that the S-procedure is simplified at this point.

Our present line of argument not only provides an additional motivation for canonical word order at the initial state, but it also allows us to define what is entailed in the learner‘s simplification of the S-procedure. The Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis implies that a fixed association is established between a-, f- and c-structure when the development of L2 syntax starts. This association relationship specifies how sentences can be formed despite the simple structure of the interlanguage, and it constrains the interlanguage grammar into canonical word order. Viewing SLA from this perspective, the remainder of the acquisition process can be seen as the cumulative adaptation of the interlanguage to the specific linking principles of the L2.