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ERIC Number: EJ1226624
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Oct
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0267-6583
EISSN: N/A
The Acquisition of Object Movement in Dutch: L1 Transfer and Near-Native Grammars at the Syntax-Discourse Interface
Smeets, Liz
Second Language Research, v35 n4 p479-504 Oct 2019
This article investigates near-native grammars at the syntax--discourse interface by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of two different domains of object movement in Dutch, which exhibit syntax-discourse or syntax-semantics level properties. English and German near-native speakers of Dutch, where German but not English allows the same mapping strategies as Dutch in the phenomena under investigation, are tested on two felicity judgment tasks and a truth value judgment task. The results from the English participants show sensitivity to discourse information on the acceptability of non-canonical word orders, but only when the relevant discourse cues are sufficiently salient in the input. The acquisition of semantic effects on object movement was native-like for a large subset of the participants. The German group performed on target in all experiments. The results are partially in line with previous studies reporting L2 convergence at the syntax-discourse interface, but suggest that input effects should also be taken into account. Furthermore, the differences between the first language (L1) English and the L1 German group suggests that non-target performance at the syntax-discourse interface is not caused by general bilingual difficulties in integrating discourse information into syntax. The article elaborates on factors that contribute to (in)complete acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2814
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A