UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR IN CHILD SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION NULL SUBJECTS AND MORPHOLOGICAL UNIFORMITY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION & LANGUAGE DISORDERS EDITORS Harald Clahsen William Rutherford University of Essex University of Southern California EDITORIAL BOARD Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen) Patricia Clancy (University of California at Santa Barbara) Werner Deutsch (Universität Braunschweig) Kenji Hakuta (Stanford University) Kenneth Hyltenstam (University of Stockholm) Peter Jordens (Free University, Amsterdam) Barry McLaughlin (University of California at Santa Cruz) Jurgen Meisel (Universität Hamburg) Anne Mills (University of Amsterdam) Csaba Pleh (University of Budapest) Michael Sharwood Smith (University of Utrecht) Catherine Snow (Harvard University) Jurgen Weissenborn (Max Planck Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen) Lydia White (McGill University) Helmut Zobl (Carleton University, Ottawa) Volume 10 Usha Lakshmanan Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR IN CHILD SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION NULL SUBJECTS AND MORPHOLOGICAL UNIFORMITY USHA LAKSHMANAN Southern Illinois University at Carbondale JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lakshmanan, Usha. Universal grammar in child second language acquisition / Usha Lakshmanan. p. cm. -- (Language acquisition & language disorders : ISSN 0925-0123; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Second language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general. I. Title. II. Series. P118.2. L35 1994 401'.93-dc20 94-26067 ISBN 90 272 2475 7 (Eur.) / 1 55619 247 9 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP ISBN 90 272 2486 2 (Eur.) / 1 55619 783 7 (US) (Pb; alk. paper) © Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA Table of Contents Acknowledgements viii 1. Syntactic Theory and Child Second Language Acquisition 1 1.0. Introduction 1 1.1. The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition 3 1.2. UG and Parameterized Grammars 5 1.3. The Developmental Problem 8 1.3.1. Triggering Data 9 1.3.2. Non-Linguistic Maturation Factors 11 1.3.3. Linguistic Maturation Factors 12 1.3.4. Learning Procedure 13 1.3.5. Critical Period for Language Acquisition 14 1.4. UG and SLA 17 1.4.1. Previous L2 Research 18 1.4.2. UG and Child SLA 19 1.5. A Note on Methodology 23 Notes to Chapter 1 24 2. Theoretical Framework 27 2.0. Introduction 27 2.1. The Structure of INFL 29 2.2. Null Subjects an d Rich Agreement 31 2.3. The AG/PRO Parameter 33 2.4. Null Subjects in Languages without Rich Agreement 34 2.5. The Morphological Uniformity Principle 37 2.6. Identification of Null Subjects 41 2.7. Summary 45 Notes to Chapter 2 45 3. Null Subjects in Developing Grammars 47 3.0. Introduction 47 3.1. Parameter Setting Accounts of the Null Subject Phenomenon 49 3.2. Morphological Development and Null Subjects in Early Grammars 51 3.3. Predictions of the MUP for SLA 59 3.4. Null Subjects in Developing L2 Grammars 61 3.5. Summary 66 Notes to Chapter 3 67 4. Morphological Uniformity and Null Subjects in Child 71 L2 Grammars 4.0. Introduction 71 4.1. Research Questions 72 4.2. Methods 73 4.2.1. Subjects 73 4.2.2. The Data 75 4.2.3. Data Analysis 77 4.3. Results 82 4.3.1 Relations between Null Subjects and Verb Inflections 82 4.3.1.1. Null Subjects 82 4.3.1.2. Null Subjects versus Verb Inflections 86 4.3.1.3. Relations between Inflection Acquisition and Type 90 of Verb Morphology 4.3.2 Relations between Null Subjects and Ts-Contexts' 93 4.3.2.1. Developmental Relations between Null Subjects and 97 'Is Constructions' 4.4. Summary 101 Notes to Chapter 4 102 Appendix A 104 Appendix B 108 Appendix C 110 Appendix D 114 5. Discussion and Conclusions 118 5.0. An Overview 118 5.1. Discussion 119 5.1.1. Implications of the Findings for the MUP 120 5.1.2. Perpetual Factors and the L1 129 5.1.3. Individual Differences 138 5.1.4. Implications for Access to UG and Child SLA 141 5.2. Conclusion 144 Notes to Chapter 5 146 References 148 Index 159 Acknowledgements This book is a revised version of my Ph D dissertation (Lakshmanan 1989) that was submitted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Thanks foremost to the Co-Chairs of my dissertation committee Susan Gass and John Swales and the two other members of my dissertation committee Marilyn Shatz and Madhav Deshpande for their invaluable advice and tremendous support throughout. I am indebted to Larry Selinker for the many invaluable discussions of the issues addressed in this book. I am grateful to Jiirgen Weissenborn and Lydia White for their very helpful comments on the manuscript submitted for review. The revisions to the manuscript were completed at the Department of Linguistics in Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. I am grateful to Paul Angelis, Chair of the Department of Linguistics and my colleagues in the department for their support and encouragement. Several other individuals have contributed directly and indirectly to the shaping of this work from its incipient stages to its completion. In particular I thank: Herlinda Cancino, Kenji Hakuta and John Schumann for making the data from the four child L2 subjects available for the study. Renu Gupta for undertaking the mammoth task of photocopying numerous transcripts of the child L2 data and making them available to me. John Warner and Jyothi Sarkar for their help with the analysis and interpretation of the statistical data. Chang and James Lenze for their help with the graphics. Sarah Briggs, Sharon Hilles, Nina Hyams, Carolyn Madden, K.P. Mohanan, and India Plough and Bill Rutherford for their very useful discussions. Patsy Aldridge for her help in tracking down books and articles. Takae Tsujioka for her tremendous help with the indexing and the formatting of the camera-ready version. Cornells Vaes and Lise Winer for their very helpful comments on the formatting of the camera-ready version. My parents, sisters, brother and Piet Hein for their support and encouragement throughout. The research reported here was partially funded by a Rackham Block Grant awarded by the Program in Linguistics at the University of Michigan.